square, affording glimpses of a perfect English garden, complete with tennis courts, rolling lawns, English oaks, and a gazebo.
Mrs. Barkins pushed open a heavy mahogany door. “This will be your room, miss,” she said to Molly. She then led the way through a bright rose-decorated room that opened onto a little sitting room, on the far side of which was a door that led to Mary’s room.
Both girls turned dark red with embarrassment when they realized that their small stock of shabby clothes had been neatly hung away and their worn and darned undergarments placed in the drawers.
“Goodge will be your maid,” said Mrs. Barkins, who was a stout, motherly woman with eyes as hard as pebbles and whose aprons and petticoats crackled with so much starch that she emitted a sharp series of noises like little pistol shots every time she moved. “Goodge is a local girl,” Mrs. Barkins was saying. “I trust you will see that she does her work properly.”
“That is surely your job,” said Molly sweetly.
Mrs. Barkins looked at her in amazement. She had been looking forward to a mild spot of bullying. After all, Americans were heathens and didn’t know what was what. But this young American had a steely glint in her eye and a firm set to her jaw. Mrs. Barkins reluctantly dropped a curtsy.
“I’ll see to it, miss.”
When the door had closed behind her, Molly found that her hands were trembling. What did one do with a maid? She had never ordered anyone around in all her young life.
But when Goodge appeared, a shy apple-faced girl not much older than Molly herself, and stood in the doorway with her eyes down, twisting her apron nervously in her hands, Molly recovered her courage.
“Now, Goodge,” she said, “you will find that we are not used to having a lady’s maid and you, I gather, are new to the work. I guess we’ll manage somehow between us. Okay?”
“Oh, yes, miss,” said the gratified Goodge, saving up that deliciously foreign “Okay” for use in the kitchen.
“We have not yet got our new wardrobes,” Molly went on, “so you’ll just need to pick out the best we have.”
She gave the maid a beautiful smile. Molly had a warm and charming smile that had already broken many hearts in Fulton Street, and the shy and timid Goodge was completely bowled over.
She, Goodge, would be the best lady’s maid ever. She marched briskly over to the wardrobe and picked out Molly’s Sunday dress, of drab brown taffeta, with a sure hand.
“This will be just the thing, miss,” said Goodge. “My lady is with the dressmaker now and you are to have ever such lovely clothes.” Goodge set to work.
Molly found to her surprise that it was a pleasant novelty to be waited on. To have deft little hands to fasten up all those awkward hooks and buttons and to gently brush one’s tangled hair.
Mary was still very shy. “Come to my room when she does me,” she whispered.
The next hour went by with bewildering speed as the exhausted girls were turned this way and that and pinned and measured and fitted for new clothes. Then there was tea with Lady Fanny, but both felt too tired and nervous to eat any of the tiny sandwiches or luscious cakes.
At last they were told that they might take a walk in the garden before dinner. They walked away from the house, sedately arm in arm, and then, as one, began to run as soon as they were out of sight of the house. They ended up, panting and breathless, in a little wood through which they could see the chimneys of the house next door.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to take much of this,” said Molly when they at last found a fallen log to sit on. “What say we write to Ma and ask her to fetch us home?”
“Oh, Molly,” breathed Mary, “if only we
could.
”
“Well, I don’t see why not,” said Molly bracingly. “It’s like living with a sergeant major. I was so hungry at tea but she kept putting me off my food with her ‘No,
no
! You must hold the teapot
so.
’