The gal, who looked after Bill along with her brood of four, was in bed with a fever in the hours before dawn, and I knew that Charlotte was planning to spend a rare day off with Mr. Cleneay, her husband-to-be. So I’d no other choice but to bring Bill with me to Mrs. Haslam’s.

I handed Pat a clean dish towel to wipe off his hand, now sticky as well.

Yes, Bill was underneath that table for a reason, Miss.

Mrs. Haslam would have fainted. A Negro child and Mr. Hearn! She would have grabbed her waist and raised her voice, as if I wouldn’t have seen for myself whom I had gathered in her kitchen. My saving grace—that evening and every evening there—was that Mrs. Haslam hated the sight of the kitchen, especially after the supper service. The slop and the mess of cooking, she’d told me when she hired me, didn’t interest her. She talked about the kitchen as if it were a pigsty. The slop and the mess? Molly’s kitchen, Aunt Sweetie’s, and none of mine have ever suffered from slop or mess. What Mrs. Haslam meant was that if I did my job ably, she wouldn’t surprise or shadow me like other employers would.

I gave Bill another fried pie, and Pat eyed the golden half-moon as it traveled from my hand to Bill’s. So I gave Pat one too, and he sat down again. Bill settled cross-legged by Pat’s chair, his little body half under the work table and half out.

I returned to the last of the dishes. At the sink, with my back to them, I could hear them enjoying their treats. Bill with his mouse-like nibbles because he was trying to make the sweetness last, and Pat with his wide-jawed bites—two and the fried pie would be gone—so that no one could come along and take it from him. There was hunger in both of their bodies. One I could feed, and the other I couldn’t.

When Pat didn’t see Bill in the kitchen the next evening, he asked after him, and then he asked for his story.

I told Pat the same one I’ve told you, Miss.

Yes, he believed me.

Pat asked how old Bill was, and I replied that he was almost five. Pat blinked and blinked. He didn’t mention Bill’s name again in the days that followed, and I thought that he’d forgotten about the boy, as men often forget about children, even when they are their own. Then, one evening, Pat placed a toy soldier with a brightly painted red coat and white britches on the kitchen’s work table and said that it was for Not a Gentleman Bill. Over the course of that next week, the soldiers and then their horses kept on appearing, in twos and threes, until Bill had a full set.