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“Well, you can remedy that,” the older girl said. “I’ll help, if you like, some evening.”
Lyddie looked up gratefully. She felt no need with Diana to apologize or to be ashamed of her ignorance. “I’m needing a bit of help with the regulations …”
“I shouldn’t wonder. They’re a trial for us all,” Diana said. “Why don’t you bring the broadside over to Number Three tonight and we’ll slog through that wretched thing together.”
* * *
* * *
Amelia was not pleased that evening after supper when she realized that Lyddie was getting ready to go out. “Your first day. You ought to rest.”
“I’m all right,” said Lyddie. And, indeed, once the noise of the weaving room was out of her ears, she did feel quite all right. A bit tired, but certainly not overweary. “I aim to do a bit of studying,” she said. It made her feel proud to say such a thing.
“Studying? With whom?”
“The girl I’m working with in the weaving room. Diana—” She realized that she didn’t know Diana’s surname.
Amelia, Prudence, and Betsy worked in the spinning room on the third floor, so she supposed they did not know Diana. Betsy looked up from her ever-present novel. “Diana Goss?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Just Diana. She was very kind to me today.”
“Diana Goss?” echoed Amelia. “Oh Lyddie, don’t be taken in.”
Lyddie couldn’t believe her ears. “Ey?”
“If it’s Diana Goss,” Prudence said, “she’s a known radical, and Amelia is concerned—”
“Ey?”
Betsy laughed. “I don’t think our little country cousin is acquainted with any radicals, known or unknown.”
“I know Quakers,” Lyddie said. “Creation! They’re abolitionists, every one, ey?”
“Hoorah for you.” Betsy put down her novel and made a little show of clapping her hands.
Amelia was sewing new ribbons on her Sunday bonnet and, watching Betsy’s performance, managed to jab the needle into her finger instead of the hat brim. She stuck her finger in her mouth and looked up annoyed. “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying things like ‘creation’ and ‘ey,’ Lyddie. It’s so—so—”
“Only the new girls from Vermont speak like that,” said Prudence, whose own mountain sp
eech was well tamed.
Lyddie didn’t quite know what to do. She had no desire to anger her roommates, but she was quite set on going to see Diana. It wasn’t just the foolish regulations. She wanted to learn everything—to become as quietly competent as the tall girl. She knew enough about factory life already to realize that good workers in the weaving room made good money. It wasn’t like being a maid where hard work only earned you a bonus in exhaustion.
“Well,” she said, tying her bonnet, “I’ll be back soon.”
“I’d rather you wouldn’t go at all,” Amelia said coolly.
Lyddie smiled. She didn’t mean to seem unfriendly or even ungrateful, though it was tiresome to be always beholden to Amelia. “I don’t want you to worry after me. I’m able to do for myself, ey?”
“Hah!” Betsy’s short laugh came out like a snort.
“It’s just—” Prudence said “—it’s just that you haven’t been here long enough to know about certain things. Amelia doesn’t—well, none of us—want you to find yourself in an awkward situation.”
For a moment Lyddie was afraid that Amelia or even Prudence would start in to lecture her, so she grabbed her shawl and said as she was moving out of the bedroom door, “I’ll watch out.” Though what she was promising to look out for, she had no idea.
Diana’s boardinghouse was only two houses away from her own. The architecture was identical—a four-story brick building—lined with rows of windows that blinked like sleepy eyes as lamps and candles were lit against the dusk of an April evening.
The front door was unlocked, so she walked into the large front room, like Mrs. Bedlow’s, nearly filled with two large dining tables but with the semblance of a living area on one side. And just as in Mrs. Bedlow’s parlor, chairs had been pulled away from the tables and girls were chatting and sewing and reading in the living area. It was as noisy and busy as a chicken yard. Peddlers had come off the street to tempt the girls with ribbons and cheap jewelry. A local phrenologist was in one corner measuring a girl’s skull and preparing to read her character from his findings. Several girls were watching this consultation transfixed.
