And now, on this first morning of her new life, she lay in bed a few minutes to relish the quiet of the empty attic. Three days rattling in a coach, then to share a room with five others—indeed, a bed with a stranger who woke Lyddie in the middle of the night with her tossing and snoring—to be clanged awake by a bell, and to have her head punctured by shrieks and squeals and the rattle of voices—it made the windowless alcove she had left behind at Cutler’s seem a haven of peace. But she would not look back. She threw off the quilt. She had nothing to wear but her much too small homespun. It couldn’t be helped. She dressed herself and padded down the four flights of stairs in her darned and redarned stockings.

The front room was crowded with the two large dining tables that Tim, Mrs. Bedlow’s son, was scurrying to set. Wonderful smells of coffee and apple pie and hash and—would it be fish?—wafted through the house from the magical stove as though to prove how many separate wonders it could perform at once.

“I’ve left my boots …” Lyddie started.

Mrs. Bedlow looked up, her round face radiant from the heat. “They’re by the stove drying, but they won’t do, you know.”

“Ey?”

“Your clothes. Your boots. They simply won’t do. That dress is only fit now to be burned. Or what’s left of it. I’m afraid it turned to mud stew in my kettle. What could my crazy brother have been thinking of letting a mere girl …?”

“Oh, it wasn’t his fault, ma’am,” said Lyddie, slipping her feet into Triphena’s boots, now stiff from a night beside the stove. “It was the men. They were so stupid …”

“You needn’t tell me. I know that brother of mine. He was sitting up on top laughing, not giving a word of direction.”

“But he had the coach and team …”

“Nonsense. He does it to amuse himself and humiliate his betters. He’d wreck a coach if he thought it would give him a rollicking story to tell in the tavern that night. And all at the cost of your clothes and dignity.”

“Well, I ain’t lost much either way.”

“Have you any money at all?”

Lyddie hesitated. She really didn’t. It was Triphena’s money, not her own.

“If I’m to recommend you to the Concord Corporation, you need to look decent. They like to hire a good class of girls here.”

Lyddie reddened.