“What is the girl like?” Hazel asked.

“Seems lonely, poor thing. She had a pet weasel, but Montagu’s dog ate it.”

“A possum, I think it was,” the other one said. “I’d heard that the natives speak only gibberish, but this one knows French as well as English.”

“Maybe the clever ones can be trained,” said the first. “Like dogs.”

Hazel was curious about this child. She’d never seen a native; were they really that different? But she said nothing. She was not going to gossip, or ask questions, or otherwise jeopardize her new position. All she wanted to do was to hold on to her place in this household with both fists, to serve her time and get out.

Over the next few weeks at the governor’s house, Hazel acclimated to the routine. Just after dawn, as soon as she arrived, she hurried to the shed behind the kitchen outbuilding to get wood for the hearth. After lighting the fire, she filled two big black kettles with water from the cistern in the kitchen and hung them on iron hooks above the flames. When the cook arrived, Hazel and another convict maid went through the main building, lighting fires in the breakfast room and the drawing rooms so that they’d be warm when Sir John and Lady Franklin emerged from their chambers. The maids swept the foyer and front steps and veranda and set the breakfast table for the family, then crossed the courtyard to the kitchen to make toast and scoop butter into tiny dishes. While Lady Franklin and Sir John were eating, the maids went into their bedrooms and knelt in front of the fireplaces, sifting cinders and cleaning the grates, then opened windows and aired feather beds, turning and plumping them. (How different these downy mattresses were from the hard canvas hammocks at the Cascades!) They dusted picture frames and chair upholstery and shelves filled with books. They carried the family’s chamber pots to the outdoor privy behind the stables, where they emptied them and rinsed them with well water.

When the Franklins had finished breakfast, Hazel cleared the table and took the dirty dishes to the kitchen to wash in the stone sink, using care not to chip the delicate teacups. Now she could eat her own breakfast: slow-cooked oats, with tea and toast and honey.

Then she cleaned the candlesticks and trimmed the lamps.

She refilled kettles all day long. Twice a day, she knelt in front of the kitchen hearth, sifting the cinders and cleaning the grate.

Once the morning chores were done, Hazel’s work varied by day. On Mondays she cleaned the kitchen, scouring the pantry and the drawers and scrubbing the stone floor on her hands and knees, trying her best to stay out of the way of the cook. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were washing days. She pulled linens off the beds and collected clothing from each room, removing buttons and ribbons before dunking them in large copper urns. Three convict maids fed the washing through the mangle before setting it out on the drying lawn or hanging it on the clothesline. Inevitably, they got soaking wet. They had to change into dry uniforms before hanging clothes in the frigid air.