So when her mother picked her up at Lady Chatterton’s School for Young Gentlewomen, Charlotte felt resigned, but not excited. Her mother arrived in full armor, in Charlotte’s private opinion: in the ducal coach with four footmen behind. The duchess was shy and quailed at the thought of an interview with the formidable Lady Sipperstein. Poor Mama, Charlotte thought. She must have been in a terrible tizzy.

Finally Charlotte and her mother were regally dismissed by Lady Sipperstein and escaped in the coach. The duchess grinned in a most unduchesslike fashion, leaned back against the satin cushions, and said, “Thank goodness, you’re finished, Charlotte! I never have to see Lady Sipperstein again! We can be comfortable. How did the last picture go, darling—oranges, wasn’t it?” For Charlotte’s mama was a devoted parent, who lovingly kept track of her children’s latest exploits, even if in Charlotte’s case that had simply turned into a long progression of watercolor fruits.

“All right, Mama,” Charlotte said. “I’ll show you when we get home.” Charlotte frowned a bit. Her mama treated all her work the same: with reverence, delight, and a noncritical eye.

“Good,” said Adelaide comfortably. “I shall send it off immediately to Saxony. We’re doing quite well on that hallway, dearest. Why, two or three more and the walls will be full!”

Charlotte grimaced. Her parents seemed to view her painting as a decorating tool, a kind of wallpaper. Each new painting was sent out to the best framer (Messrs. Saxony, Framers to the Crown), fitted into a gold frame with an appropriate matte chosen personally by Mr. Saxony, Sr., and solemnly delivered back to the ducal mansion. Then it was hung up in a long, long row of fruit (and the odd vegetable) that decorated a long, long hall in the east wing.

“Now, Charlotte,” Adelaide said with resolution. “We must start planning for your come out immediately. Why, I happen to know that Lady Riddleford—Isabella’s mother—has already taken the weekend of April nineteenth, which was precisely when I was planning your ball, dearest. So we must choose a time immediately and make it known. I was thinking of the weekend after. What do you think, darling?”

Charlotte didn’t answer. She was thinking of her latest painting. But Adelaide was used to Charlotte’s lapses into inattentiveness; she simply returned to her plans.

When Charlotte visited what her brother, Horace, called the orchard (the long row of pictures in the east wing) she could see change: hours of painting under Miss Frollip’s tutelage had turned her oranges from misshapen to round; apples stopped being poisonously red and gained some reality.