The people at Cutler’s were not so easy to forget. The mistress was large in body and seemed to be everywhere on watch. How could a woman so obviously rich in this world’s goods be so mean in the use of them? Her eyes were narrow and close and always on the sharp for the least bit of spilt flour or the odd crumb on the lip.

Not that Lyddie would stoop to steal a bite of bread. But the boy, Willie Hyde, was given to snatching the last of the loaf as he carried the breadbasket from the table to the kitchen. He was a year or so older than Charles and growing like red birch, and to hear the mistress carry on, about as useless. He was sent to shed or barn or field whenever he was not needed in the tavern itself. Lyddie would not have said so, but she envied him the chance to be outdoors and out of boots so often.

Mistress Cutler watched Lyddie like a barn cat on a sparrow, but Lyddie was determined not to give her cause for complaint. She had worked hard since she could remember. But now she worked even harder, for who was there to share a moment’s leisure with? Who would listen with her to a bird call, stare at the sunset, or watch a calf stumble on its long, funny legs toward its mother? Missing Charlie was like wearing a stone around her neck.

She slept under the eaves in a windowless passage, which was hot and airless even in late spring. She was ordered to bed late and obliged to rise early, for the mistress was determined that no paying guest in the windowed rooms across the narrow passageway should know that they shared the floor with the kitchen girl.

She spoke rarely, but she listened intently, storing up stories for Charlie. She didn’t consider writing him. She was ashamed to have Charlie see her poor penmanship and crude spelling and, besides, there was no money for paper or postage—nothing except the calf money, and she would not spent a half penny of that. Indeed, at night when she was too tired or too hot to sleep, she would take the gunnysack out from under her straw mattress and count the money in the darkness. It’s like little Agnes sucking her thumb, she scolded herself, but she didn’t stop. It was the only comfort she had that summer.

*  *  *

It was nearly September when she saw the pink silk lady again. She had come this time on the coach from Burlington, and was headed, Lyddie overheard her say at supper, for Lowell, Massachusetts. When another traveler asked her business in Lowell, she smiled and said, “Why I work in the Hamilton Mill there. Yes,” she added, answering her questioner’s stare, “I’m one of those factory girls.”