"Yes, Mistress." I'm thinkin' fearfully that it's sort of like being bent over a cannon and having your pants pulled down and your bottom switched, which was the common punishment for ship's boys on the Dolphin. Never happened to me, though it was close a couple of times. Maybe this won't happen to me here, neither. I hope not. I didn't like the feel of that stick of hers.
"All right, then." She picks up some papers and holds them up. "I have read an account of your recent life aboard that ship, provided by Mr. Tilden, and I find it neither amusing nor reassuring as to your moral character," she says, crossing her arms and looking at me intently. "Are you still innocent?"
Innocent? Of what?
She notes my confusion. She narrows her eyes even more and says, "Are you yet a maiden?"
Oh. That.
"Yes, Mistress," I stammers. If only just barely, I thinks, but I don't say it out loud.
She is silent for a bit and then says, "Very well. I choose to believe you on that. I would not take you if I believed otherwise. It is reassuring that you can still blush, at least. You will, however, never speak with the other girls of your past life, as it smacks of the sordid and the unseemly. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Mistress."
Her gaze has never once left my face. "I have grave misgivings about taking you on as a student, given your origins and past life, but we shall see. Hold out your hand."
I sticks out my trembling hand half expectin' her to give it a whack with her stick for my past sins, but instead she jams my ring into it. "I never want to see that, or any kind of ornament on you again. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Mistress," I say in my misery.
"And, Miss Faber, the most important thing of all," she says, standing and raising herself to her full height, "although you may know the name of this school to be the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, I want you to fully understand that those are the names of the founders and trustees but that it is my school and my girls and you will never bring disgrace down upon me and my school by your actions and comportment. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, Mistress." I'm thinkin' that this is a lot like bein' read the Articles of War on the ship—every breakin' of a rule bein' punishable by death.
"Good. We will go up and meet my girls now." She comes around from behind the desk. "You will find that my girls have a look about them that distinguishes them from the common run of girl, and you, Miss Faber, will try to cultivate that look."
She comes up next to me. "My girls walk as if they were delicately balancing a book upon their heads. They keep their lips together and their teeth apart."
I lift my head and drop my jaw down a bit with my lips mashed together.
She sighs. "Relax the lips, Miss Faber. Make a cupid's bow of them. Now drop your eyelids down halfway. That's better. Not even close to the ideal, but better." She lifts her rod and taps my shoulders with it. "Not so rigidly straight. Remember the book on your head. You are projecting a look of languid confidence."
She steps back to look at me.
"Eventually, Miss Faber, it is further to be hoped that you will learn to control your emotions so that they do not display quite so visibly on your face as they do right now. My girls have a look about them and appearing to be about to burst into tears is not part of that look. Let us go."
"Yes, Mistress."
There is a broad sweep of stairs at the end of the hallway and up it we do go, Mistress first and me behind watching the swaying hem of her skirt. At the top, we turn right and enter a large room that has beds lined up on either side. There are chests of drawers and windows curtained with light white drapes on each side. There are also about thirty girls of various sizes and ages, dressed just like me. They all get to their feet upon seeing Mistress Pimm enter.
"Good day, Ladies."
"Good day, Mistress," say the girls as one.
"I've asked you to gather here before dinner to welcome a new girl, Miss Faber." She steps aside for me to come forward. "She is from England. Acquaint her with our ways and our rules."
And with that, Mistress turns on her heel and leaves the room.
Well. I breathe a bit easier with her gone. Maybe I'll find some warmth down here in the crew's quarters, but I dunno—all I see now is unsmiling faces turned toward me, lookin' all haughty and ... oh, right—the Look, that's what it is.
Nothin' for it but to put on my most charmin' smile and beam it all around. "My name is Mary, but you can call me Jacky—everybody does," I pipes and looks around at their faces expectin'...what? Welcome, maybe. I don't see much in the way of that, though.
I hear some snickerin' and mutterin' and my smile is startin' to feel foolish on me face. Then the crowd parts and a girl, a small blond girl not much bigger than me, comes forward, her face uplifted, her eyes hooded, her back straight. She has the Look for certain, and she brings it all up in front of me.
She is perfect in all her parts. Her hair is perfectly piled on her head with perfectly coiled ringlets hanging down either side of her perfect face. She is a lovely cream color with touches of pink in the right places and her eyes are large and liquid and bright blue. Her nose is small and fine and her lips are full and red and shaped like a bow. Her neck is long and slender and her upper chest is soft and white without being powdered I know, and I know that her dress, which is the same color and cut as mine, is much finer in its material and drape and I feel suddenly shabby in my once-proud new dress. And in my pigtail and my tanned face and my freckles and my scarred, scrawny body.
"My name is Clarissa Worthington Howe, of the Virginia Howes," says the girl, after looking in my face for a bit. "You may call me Miss Howe."
By now my hopeful grin has slid completely off me face. Sweat breaks out on my brow and I know it makes me look like a scared scrub but frettin' about it only makes me sweat all the more—I can feel my armpits working up steam and sendin' the sweat tricklin' down over my ribs.
Clarissa Worthington Howe looks at me and tilts her head to the side and looks as if she is about to decide something about me. Her blue eyes roam quite boldly over my face, and then her eyes stop and I can tell she is looking at my white eyebrow and its scar from where Bliffil got me with his boot that day. The perfect lips part and she says, "So you are a Tory, then?" Sweet and soft she says it. So you are ah Toe-ree they-un?
I'm in total confusion. Tory? My mind races back for that word and I remembers it from when I was a child and riding Hugh the Grand's broad shoulders and reading the newspapers pinned to the print-shop walls for the amusement of the Fleet Street crowd. Tory? She's callin' me a conservative member of Parliament? I don't get it.
"Tory?" I blurts out. "I ain't no Tory. I'm just a poor girl what's lately come from sea to study here and become a lady like the rest o' yiz." Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. As soon as it's out me mouth I know it's stupid stupid stupid and makes me sound like I just fell off the back of a Cheap-side turnip wagon. Stupid!
"English, a Tory, and so very, very common, too. My, my," she says as she turns and floats away. "I'm afraid she won't do," she says to no one in particular, but the other girls turn away from me, too. "I'm afraid she won't do at all."