He’d tilted his head to one side and looked at me, as if I’d said something important. “Yes, they might.”

I knew what happened when a word was discarded. I folded bondmaid carefully and put it in the pocket of my pinny.

A moment later, Da’s face appeared under the sorting table. “Run along now, Esme. Lizzie’s waiting for you.”

I peered between all the legs—chairs’, table’s, men’s—and saw the Murrays’ young maid standing beyond the open door, her pinafore tied tight around her waist, too much fabric above and too much fabric below. She was still growing into it, she told me, but from under the sorting table she reminded me of someone playing at dressing-up. I crawled between the pairs of legs and scampered out to her.

“Next time you should come in and find me; it would be more fun,” I said, when I got to Lizzie.

“It’s not me place.” She took my hand and walked me to the shade of the ash tree.

“Where is your place?”

She frowned, then shrugged. “The room at the top of the stairs, I s’pose. The kitchen when I’m helping Mrs. Ballard, but definitely not when I ain’t. St. Mary Magdalen on a Sunday.”

“Is that all?”

“The garden, when I’m caring for you—so we don’t get under Mrs. B’s feet. And more and more the Covered Market, ’cos of her cranky knees.”

“Has Sunnyside always been your place?” I asked.

“Not always.” She looked down at me, and I wondered where her smile had gone.

“Where did it used to be?”

She hesitated. “With me ma and all our littluns.”

“What are littluns?”

“Children.”

“Like me?”

“Like you, Essymay.”

“Are they dead?”

“Just me ma. The littluns was taken away, I don’t know where. They was too young for service.”

“What’s service?”

“Will you never stop asking questions?” Lizzie picked me up under the arms and swung me round and round until we were both so dizzy we collapsed on the grass.

“Where’s my place?” I asked as the dizziness faded.

“The Scrippy, I guess, with your father. The garden, my room, and the kitchen stool.”

“My house?”

“ ’Course your house, though you seem to spend more time here than there.”

“I don’t have a Sunday place like you do,” I said.

Lizzie frowned. “Yes, you do, St. Barnabas church.”

“We only go sometimes. When we do, Da brings a book. He holds it in front of the hymns and reads instead of singing.” I laughed, thinking of Da’s mouth opening and closing in imitation of the congregation, but not a sound coming out.

“That’s nothing to laugh at, Essymay.” Lizzie held her hand against the crucifix I knew rested beneath her clothes. I worried she would think badly of Da.

“It’s because Lily died,” I said.