When they reached the appointed corner, however, Susan was suddenly all smiles and chatter. “Coo, but Mrs. Lavendar’s in a fine dither about all them clothes the master’s wantin’ you to buy. She says it ain’t proper.”

Maggie had thoughts along that line herself, especially now that she’d read the list, but she didn’t voice them. She only leaned around Susan and her basket to look down the street for the trolley car. There was no sign of it, though Maggie could hear its bell chiming in the distance.

“Tell me true, Miss Margaret,” Susan persisted. “Are you really a governess or are you one of them what likes warmin’ a gentleman’s bed?”

Maggie was preoccupied and it was a moment before Susan’s words sank in. When they did, she glared at the girl, her cheeks pulsing, her eyes flashing like the swift silver blade of a knife. “What did you say?” she demanded in a hiss.

Susan stepped back, holding the basket in front of her like a shield, and Maggie subsided.

“I am no man’s mistress, Susan Crockett,” she said haughtily as the streetcar approached with a clanging of bells and screeching of rails, drawing its power through long metal rods from the wires strung above the street. “And you can tell Mrs. Lavendar and all the maids that I’ll not put up with being gossiped about!”

Maggie mounted the streetcar steps first, handing the fare given her by Mrs. Lavendar to the conductor, and took a seat near the back. The car was nearly empty, and sheepishly, Susan sat down beside Maggie.

“I’ll be done with the marketin’ long before you’ve bought all the frillies on that list, love. Remember that you’re supposed to take the Pitt Street car back home and don’t get yourself lost.”

Maggie recognized an attempt at friendliness when she heard one and she was not given to grudge-holding, but she sniffed, just to let Susan know that she had overstepped the bounds of acceptable behavior and must take care not to do so again. “I won’t get lost,” she promised, chin high, voice cool.

The car rattled and clanged along toward the heart of Sydney, and Susan did not find her tongue again until they were passing through a seedy-looking section. There were saloons everywhere, with bawds and no-accounts of every stripe lounging outside, and a din loud enough to compete with the noise of the streetcar filled the air, along with the pungent smell of seeping sewage.

“This is King’s Cross,” Susan confided behind the shelter of one upraised hand. “See that you don’t never come here by yourself, be it night or day.”