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seemed to feel that Maud ought to be improved. She didn’t scold, but she nagged. Maud had yes ma’amed her way through a number of gentle little talks about ladylike manners, tidy habits, and doing her duty. Her resolve to be perfectly good was beginning to fray at the edges.
— but she said I shouldn’t call you Aunt Hyacinth because you mightn’t like it. She said she was tired of me calling her “ma’am” all the time.
    Maud dipped her pen in ink. She thought it ungrateful of Victoria to tire of “ma’am” when she was working so hard to be polite. On the other hand, she was tired of it, too.
   I miss you very much.
    Maud searched the ceiling for something else to write. She thought of writing I wish you hadn’t gone or Why do you have to stay with Mrs. Lambert instead of me? but she didn’t dare.
Thank you for the book you sent me about Little Lord Fauntleroy. I read it twice. His mother, that he called Dearest, reminded me of you, because her voice sounded like little silver bells.
    There, that was good. Hyacinth would be flattered by the comparison.
I liked how Fauntleroy rode that pony even though he never rode before.
    Maud paused, considering the perfection of Lord Fauntleroy. The storybook hero was so perfect that the adults around him spent every spare minute comparing notes on just how perfect he was. Lord Fauntleroy had golden curls and lace collars. If he had been an orphan, he would have been adopted immediately. Maud sighed with envy.
I have a lot of time for reading since I don’t go to school. At first I read all the time but then Aunt Victoria said I should have a timetable. So now I dust the first floor every morning before anyone would come to the house and then I read and do arithmetic and help Muffet set the table. And then I have to sew, which I hate because it’s boring —
    Maud stopped and crossed out the second half of the sentence, cross-hatching the lines so that it was no longer legible. Ladies, Aunt Victoria informed her, were sparing with the word hate. Victoria had also complained that Maud was too fond of the words boring, stupid, and horrid. Maud was puzzled as to how Victoria knew this, since she took care to guard her tongue in Victoria’s presence. Maud felt, in fact, that she was growing downright mealymouthed.
— which is tedious except it will be a summer dress with stripes. Of course I like the dresses you bought me better. I let Aunt Victoria cut my hair the way you wanted. Anyway, I have to sew and then read history or geography and walk in the garden. The plants are all dead.
    Maud reread the last sentence, which was not complimentary. But what did Hyacinth expect? She had told Maud that the garden was large and lovely, but it wasn’t lovely at all. It was full of stickers, and the tall hemlocks cast so much shade that there was still snow on the ground. The hour that Maud spent outdoors was the dullest hour of the day. Victoria, however, insisted. Children needed fresh air and exercise.
    Maud changed the period at the end of her sentence to a comma and continued on.
— but I suppose something might bloom if the weather ever gets warm. Thursday we had sleet. Aunt Victoria says it’s too cold for April.
    Maud scratched her nose with the end of her pen. She wondered if Hyacinth Hawthorne had any idea how cold it was in her third-floor bedroom. There were no stoves, and Maud was not allowed a fire in the grate. During the recent cold snap, the only way to get warm was to climb into bed. Sometimes it took her a long time to stop shivering, even under the blankets.
I’ve started reading Oliver Twist. It’s so creepy, because that undertaker made the boy sleep among the coffins. Even Miss Kitteridge never made us sleep among coffins, though that might have been because she didn’t have any. That day when you said Miss Kitteridge was dreadful and took me away from the Barbary Asylum was the best day of my life, because before that —
    Maud stopped short. There