“You might spill your porridge. Or wet the bed.”

“Everyone spills their porridge sometimes. And wets the bed.”

“Not everyone. Only very bad girls.”

Hazel looked at her for a long moment. “Not only bad girls, Ruby. Good girls too, sometimes.”

Ruby shrugged. “All right. Anyhow, it’s time for you to serve my tea.”

As the weather warmed, Hazel and Ruby planted flowers in the front, beside the house, and seeds for herbs in a small patch between the house and barn. When the herbs sprouted, they hung them in the sandstone shed behind the house to dry. The front garden became a riot of color. A golden wattle tree grew beside the barn, white roses climbed a trellis, a leafy bush with pale pink, trumpet-shaped flowers sat by the front door.

Dunne’s practice was flourishing as free settlers poured into the port city. It wasn’t unusual for Hazel to show up in the morning from the Cascades with Dunne and find a huddle of people waiting patiently for his return. He’d been corresponding with a group of doctors in Melbourne who were forming an association of licensed physicians, and was learning all about the latest medical procedures. Word of his innovative techniques was spreading.

Curious about the herbs Hazel and Maeve were growing, he pinched a few stalks with his fingers and held them to his nose. “How do you use these?” he asked.

Motherwort, they told him, with its leaves like the palms of an old woman, quieted anxiety. A syrup made of water and the bark of the umbrella bush relieved coughing. The stewed bark of hickory wattle soothed inflamed skin. Crushed leaves of the spotted emu bush could be inhaled to clear nasal passages. Catnip tea fought croup; red alder eased hives.

Hazel could see him fighting to overcome his skepticism. All those years of training—of being told to disregard the natural world, to dismiss the unwritten remedies of women as folk superstition—weren’t easy to overcome.

As time went on, she began assisting in the surgery, along with Maeve. Dunne asked them to monitor the women in labor, and then to help with the births. Hazel was required to return to the Cascades at sundown, but Maeve could stay all night. Soon enough Dunne was delegating most of the obstetric cases to them, and only consulting with them when they asked him to.

The ticket of leave, when it came, was almost anticlimactic. Several months after Hazel began working for him, Dunne wrote a formal letter vouching for her and offering paid employment and lodging.

“Your ticket of leave is a privilege, not a right,” the superintendent said before releasing her. “If you commit an infraction of any kind you will be incarcerated again. Is that understood?”

Yes, she understood.

Reading the letter upside down on his desk, she saw that Dunne had signed his real name. Hutchinson either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

The matron handed Hazel the small bundle of tattered clothing she’d come in with, as well as Dunne’s copy of The Tempest. Hazel smiled. She would put it on his bookshelf where it belonged, with the rest of the Shakespeare.