Ruth was a kindhearted woman; you didn’t need magic to discern that, all you had to do was gaze into her calm blue eyes. She had been a year older than Faith when she was married with no say in the matter, having lost her parents to exile in Rhode Island because they were Quakers and considered to be enemies of the Puritan colony. Her experience had caused her to be generous to girls who had nothing other than their own abilities, for she wished someone had come to her rescue and let her be a girl awhile longer; perhaps then she might have had a choice in whom she was to wed. She no longer thought about the years when she stood at the garden gate, her hands gripping the posts, wondering what would happen if she walked down Washington Street and just kept walking, through the colony, through Connecticut, going as far as she could. But she had the children, after all, and the fact that her husband paid her little attention suited her fine. He assumed she was still a foolish girl who had cried when he took her to bed, and wept when she was confronted with running a household at such a tender age. He thought she knew nothing at all. But she’d learned quite a bit during their years together. She had seen the mud on his shoes back in the time when he would disappear at night; she remembered the woman with black hair who came to knock at their door. If anything, these things made her even more compassionate to those who had nothing, for no matter how fine her house was, or how much china and silver were in her pantry, she sometimes wished she could change places with them.

“I hope you’ll be happy here with us,” she told the reserved girl who had appeared at the door, calling herself Jane. Faith had given the last name she’d been made to use in Brooklyn, when she was her other self, the well-behaved girl. To Ruth’s eyes, she looked in need of a good meal and a place to lay her head.

“I’m sure I will be,” Faith assured her. She was now fully the obedient girl who never talked back. She had a certain smile when she acted this part, a shy, innocent expression.

“Then you were meant to be here.”

Ruth was happy to lead the girl through the house, reciting a litany of what her duties would be. The snow had all but ended, and was just a flutter of soft flakes. The April sun was strong and beneath the ice the world was already green. It would be a perfect day. Ruth Gardner Hathorne showed Faith the cot in the scullery where she could sleep, and the peg where she could leave her damp coat, and if the inappropriate red boots the girl wore gave Ruth pause it was too late, the offer to work had been extended, and the girl had hugged her as if Ruth were her own mother, then carefully hung her coat upon the hook.