“Well, I won’t be back. I’m through with all that. I won’t be carrying letters for anybody, from now on.”

“That so?”

“That’s so. I’m Mrs. Thorpe now, Veryl. I’ve hitched my wagon to another star.”

Veryl still held the duster, dangling from her hand. The ceiling fan was on, rotating the stuffy air above us. I set the bottle on the washboard. “What’s the matter, Veryl? Do you have something to say to me?”

She hung the duster from its hook on the wall and straightened her dress. “I does, Miss Lulu. I be giving you notice.”

“Notice? Notice of what?”

“Leaving,” she said. “Leaving my position. At the end of the month.”

“Oh. I see.”

“My cousin Iphigenia and me, we be saving up wages. We gwine open a little tea shop, down Victoria Street.”

You might have thought she’d have some trouble looking me in the eye with this news, but she didn’t. Not Veryl. She tilted her chin and caught me square with those dark, serious peepers of hers and told me her mind in a formal voice. She had finished straightening her dress and her arms hung rigid down her sides like a pair of sticks. She looked awfully brave.

“Well,” I said. “This is all rather sudden. I had no idea.”

“You been generous, Miss Lulu, and I appreciate that. You paying thirty shillings when the other ladies be paying fifteen—”

“Have they, now?”

“—and I been saving that money, week after week. So we be opening our own tea shop, Effie and me, the fifteenth of August.”

The champagne bottle was already dripping sweat. I pushed the hair from my damp forehead. “Well,” I said again. “Well, that’s grand. I’ll be the first one in line. You’ll be serving that rum cake of yours, won’t you?”

“Now, what does you think, Miss Lulu?”

“Good, good. And if you don’t mind asking around the Prince George for another housekeeper, I’d be much obliged.”

“I be asking already.” She untied the apron from her waist. “One thing more, Miss Lulu.”

“What’s that?”

Veryl was folding her apron carefully, applying all her concentration to the creases. As always, her hair was parted down the middle and pulled back into a snug knot at the nape of her neck, and though she scraped it all into pitiless order, still the curls made tiny, stubborn ripples all the way down. When she first came to work for me, I used to wonder what it looked like when it was loose, how long it was, whether the curls all sprang back to life as soon as they were set free. Of course, I never did find out. That was the thing about what they called the color line around here: neither one of us had the nerve to cross it.

“Well?” I said.

“You be careful, is all.”