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“And you?”
“Lyddie Worthen. Lydia Worthen.” With a rough finger she scratched at the tight homespun across her chest. It seemed to Lyddie that the room was full of young women, all well-dressed, all delicate, all beautiful. And she a crow among peacocks.
“Vermont, isn’t it?” said the one called Betsy, and a few of the others laughed.
“What’s the matter with Vermont?” The voice had a bare trace of a Green Mountain twang. “I’m from near Rutland myself. Where do you hail from, Lyddie?”
Lyddie turned to see a girl not much older than herself, but, like all the others, whiter of complexion. She had light hair braided in a crown about her head and a serious face that a few freckles failed to relieve. Lyddie pulled at her own straggly brown plaits, grateful when attention shifted and the room was once again filled with chattering.
After breakfast, Amelia and the Rutland girl, whose name was Prudence Allen, offered to take her shopping for a proper dress, work apron, shoes, and bonnet. As they were leaving, Mrs. Bedlow pressed something into Amelia’s hand, which turned out to be a dollar that Mrs. Bedlow claimed was a payment from her roguish brother for damages to Lyddie’s clothing on the way.
Much to Lyddie’s distress, it took all the money she had left, including the coachman’s dollar, to dress her in a manner that satisfied Amelia and Prudence. She was so pained at the waste of money that she couldn’t enjoy any of the new things, though she was pressed to wear the shoes home. In her heart she knew that she had never had a better-fitting pair—even the stiffness that she felt around the toes and heels and ankles was simply a reminder that she had on grand new city boots. When they were broken in, she would be able to walk anywhere in such shoes—even home.
Lyddie never quite knew how it was decided, but Mrs. Bedlow told her that evening that she would move her things from the attic to Amelia and Prudence’s room on the third floor. The other girls might grumble, which indeed they did, being passed over for a choice room by a newcomer, but Amelia had persuaded Mrs. Bedlow that since Lyddie had no relatives or friends in the house, indeed in the city, she needed their particular caring. Mrs. Bedlow, still feeling guilty about her brother, gave in. So Lyddie was moved to a smaller bedroom on the third floor to be with Amelia, Prudence, and the obviously disgruntled Betsy, who, since their previous roommate had gone home to New Hampshire the week before, had had the luxury of a bed to herself.
Four to a room was in itself a luxury, as most of the rooms held six. But even so, there was hardly any space to walk around the two double beds, the two tiny nightstands, and the various trunks and bandboxes of the inhabitants. There was no place to sit except on the beds, but then, on a regular workday there was no leisure time except the less than three hours between supper and curfew. Most of the girls spent their short measure of free time down in the parlor/dining room or out in town where there were shops and lectures and even dances, all run by honest citizens bent on parting the working girls from their wages.
“Now,” said Amelia, who was far more conscientious about her duties as caretaker than Lyddie would have wished, “where will you be going to ch
urch on the Sabbath?”
Lyddie looked up in alarm. Living as far as they had from the village, the Worthens had never even bothered to pay pew rent in the village congregational church. “I—I hadn’t thought to go.”
Amelia sighed, reminding Lyddie that she was proving a harder case than the older girl had bargained for. “Oh, but you must,” she said.
“What Amelia means,” Betsy said, looking up from her novel, “is that regardless of the state of your immortal soul, the corporation requires regular attendance of all its girls. It makes us look respectable, even those of us who waste our precious minds on novels.”
“Oh, do behave yourself, Betsy.”
“Sorry, Amelia, but if I let you carry on about her moral duties when the girl plainly has no notion of them herself, this conversation will last all night.” She put down her book and looked Lyddie straight in the face. “They’ll probably make you put in an appearance from time to time somewhere. The Methodists don’t press girls for pew rent, so if you’re short on money, best go there. You have to pay for it in longer sermons, but nonetheless I always recommend the Methodists to new girls with no particular desire to go anywhere.”
“Betsy!”
“Betsy likes to sound shocking,” Prudence explained patiently. “Don’t take it to heart.” She was brushing out her long blonde hair and looked like a princess in a fairy tale, though her voice was far too matter-of-fact for a story book.
“But—” How should Lyddie explain it? “But, ain’t Massachusetts a free country?”
“Of course, my dear,” Amelia said. “But there are rules and regulations here as in any civilized establishment. They are meant for our own good, my dear. You’ll see.”
Betsy rolled her eyes and went back to her novel.
The next morning Mrs. Bedlow led Lyddie down the street past all the corporation boardinghouses to the bridge that led to the factory complex. Between two low brick buildings was a tall wooden fence. The gate of the fence was locked like a jail yard, but Mrs. Bedlow wasn’t deterred. She simply went to the door of one of the low buildings and walked in. Lyddie followed, dragging her feet, for the room they entered was larger than the main floor of Cutler’s Tavern, and it was crowded with tables and scriveners’ desks. There were a few men working about the huge room, who looked up over their pens and account books as the two women passed, but it was clear that nothing much was being accomplished even in the counting room now that the water was too high to drive the mill wheel.
Mrs. Bedlow walked straight through the room and out the door on the opposite side into a courtyard large enough, it seemed to Lyddie, for the whole of their mountain farm to fit inside. The front gate and low south buildings—the counting house, offices, and storerooms, as Mrs. Bedlow explained—formed part of the enclosure. The two slightly shorter sides were taller frame structures—the machine shops and repair shops—and across the whole north end of the compound was the cotton mill itself—a gigantic six-story brick building. At one end ran the frame structure of the outdoor staircase. From the brick face, six even rows of windows seemed to glower down at her through the gray April drizzle like so many unfriendly eyes. A bell tower rose from the long roof, making the building seem even taller and more forbidding.
“It must seem imposing to a farm girl,” Mrs. Bedlow said.
Lyddie nodded and tightened her grip on her shawl to keep from trembling.
Mrs. Bedlow turned back toward the low south building and knocked on a door marked “Agent.”
“I’ve brought you a new girl,” she said cheerily to the young man who opened the door. “Fresh from the farm and very healthy, as you can see.”
The young man hardly gave Lyddie a glance, but stepped back and held the door for them to come in. “I’ll see if Mr. Graves can spare a minute,” he said haughtily.
“These clerks do put on airs,” Mrs. Bedlow whispered, but if she was trying to make Lyddie feel more at ease, she failed. Nor was the sight of the agent himself any comfort.
“Mrs. Bedlow, isn’t it?” He was a fat, prosperous-looking man, but without the manners to stand when a middle-aged lady came into his office.
