To her annoyance as well as her relief, Maggie soon found that her sturdy woolen dress had been taken away, as had her underthings, and replaced by a servant’s gown of black bombazine. Drawers, petticoats, and a camisole of unbleached muslin replaced her own unmentionables, and there were prim black stockings as well.

Resigned, Maggie began to dress herself in the clothing provided by the Girls’ Friendly Society. Perhaps it wasn’t the appropriate garb for an interview at Mr. McKenna’s theater, but it was clean and neatly pressed and it felt good against Maggie’s freshly bathed skin. Mr. McKenna would simply have to make allowances.

Once she was fully dressed, Maggie took her brush from her carpetbag—at least that and her spare dress and nightgown remained—and did what she could to tame her too-thick, too-curly hair. It was the bane of her existence, that wild and heavy mane; how she’d love to crop it off, short as a boy’s, and leave off the fuss of braiding and brushing and pinning forever.

Breakfast was served in the kitchen, a building quite separate from the main house, at long trestle tables with benches for seats. Maggie, like the others, tucked into the steaming hotcakes, salted pork, and fried eggs with an industry born of great hunger. There was plenty of tea, too, and milk for those who wanted it.

“Now comes the speech,” said Tansy with a sigh of resignation, when one of the maids took up a position in front of the fireplace and held high an ornate sheet of paper decorated with flowers and vines and stars and moons.

Hunger appeased, Maggie pushed away her plate and sipped her tea as she listened. The maid announced importantly that a year’s faithful and industrious service in a suitable household would bring a girl just such a certificate, inscribed with Lady Cosgrove’s own signature. With the certificate, respectable work could be had anywhere in Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, or Tasmania. Without the certificate, one could expect only disgrace of the worst sort.

Neither Maggie nor any other woman in the room had any doubt whatsoever as to what constituted “disgrace of the worst sort,” and the prospect was a sobering one. Suppose Mr. McKenna turned out to be as insincere as Philip Briggs had been, Maggie reflected. She’d be out in the cold, without a certificate to prove herself fit for honest employment. Then what would she do?

Tansy preened beside Maggie. She, of course, had three such certificates already—signed by Lady Cosgrove’s various counterparts in Victoria, Queenland, and New South Wales. An idea blossomed in Maggie’s mind, but she shoved it aside to listen attentively to The Speech.