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“No, not that one. It’s—”
“Carter’s Little Liver Pills?”
“No, the big one. Top of the page.”
June’s head lifted slowly, and she skewered Reina with an incredulous stare. “Are you out of your bloody mind?”
“Please don’t shout, dear.”
“I ain’t shouting. This is the way my voice sounds when I’m talking to a squirrel-chasing crackpot.”
“Let’s consider this logically. We need help, and these people—”
“Ha! Don’t try to argy-bargy me out of my common sense. You ain’t never managed servants before. Nary a one! And you want to start by hiring an entire household staff of vicious criminals?”
“Of course not. I’m only going to hire nice criminals.”
June scowled and headed to the other side of the kitchen, taking the bit of paper with her.
“What are you doing?” Reina asked.
“I’m going to use this for paste-blacking the stove.”
“Wait!” Reina hurried after her. “It’s literally the only employment agency in London with available servants—”
“Because they’re criminals.”
“June, we need help, and these people are looking for work. Everyone makes mistakes. Someone has to give them a chance. Why not us?”
“Because we’ll be murdered in our beds.”
Reina’s lips quirked. “At least the beds will have been made up with clean sheets beforehand.”
June wasn’t amused. “There’s only two kinds of ideas that come out of your head, Queenie—genius or gnat brain. This one ain’t genius.”
Reina folded her arms as she considered that, the fingers of one hand percussing against the opposite forearm like a tiny engine generating extra power. “What I do know is that it’s a mistake to paste labels on people as if they were tinned potatoes. How often does someone make the wrong judgment about you, or me, without knowing anything about us?”
“All the time,” June admitted.
“When you applied to cookery school and they denied your application at first because they said you’d never pass the chemistry course—was that fair?”
Grudgingly, June replied, “No.”
“And were they right?”
“No.”
“No indeed, because who just earned the highest marks in class on the chemistry test?”
“I did!” June crowed, unable to keep from doing a little victory dance.
“Yes, you did,” Reina exclaimed, dancing with her. They linked arms and spun in a circle. “You showed them that everyone deserves a chance.”
June came to an abrupt halt and scowled. “Everyone except criminals.”
“Let’s not use that word, it’s demeaning. Let’s call them ‘former inmates.’ ”
“How about ‘slamkins’ or ‘dungeon-weasels’?”
