Mrs. Amwell seemed to take an instant liking to me. She bent forward to speak to me, crouching low so our faces almost touched, and soon after she placed her arm around my mother, whose eyes were brimming again with tears. I was delighted when Mrs. Amwell finally took my hand in hers, walked me to the broad mahogany desk at the front of the office and asked the attendant for the papers.

As she filled in the required information, I noticed that Mrs. Amwell’s hand shook badly as she wrote, and it seemed a great effort to keep the nib of the pen steady. Her words were jagged and bent at odd angles, but it meant little to me. I had been unable to read in those days, and all handwriting looked as illegible as the next.

After a tearful goodbye with my mother, my new mistress and I took a coach to the house she shared with Mr. Amwell, her husband. I was to work first in the scullery, and so Mrs. Amwell introduced me to Sally, the cook and kitchenmaid.

In the weeks to follow, Sally minced no words: according to her, I did not know the proper way to scour a pot or how to pick roots from a potato without damaging the flesh. As she showed me the “right” way of doing things, I put up no complaint, for I enjoyed my placement with the Amwells. I had my own room in the attic, which was more than my mother had told me to expect, and from there I could watch the amusing, ever-present activity on the street below: the sedan chairs rushing past, the porters bearing enormous boxes of unseen goods, the comings and goings of a young couple who I believed newly in love.

Eventually, Sally grew comfortable with my abilities and began allowing me to assist in the preparation of meals. It felt a small movement upward, just as my mother had said, and it gave me hope; someday, I, too, hoped to be toiling about in the magnificent streets of London, in pursuit of something greater than potatoes and pots.

One morning, while I was carefully arranging dried herbs on a platter, a housemaid rushed downstairs. Mrs. Amwell wanted to see me in her drawing room. Terror struck me at once. I felt sure I had done something wrong, and I ascended the stairs slowly, held back by a sense of dread. I had been at the Amwell house not even two months; my mother would be horrified if I were dismissed in such a short time.