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Spectator
from when he visited Williamsburg and theater programs from that town and biographies of George Washington.
    And then there was a book called
Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior,
which he'd told me about. George Washington had read it and abided by it.
    "I've got it," Sis Goose said triumphantly. And she held up a pamphlet. "Imported from England." She showed me. "Oh, how wicked," she said.
    In it were all the words and explanations we wanted to know.

    We bent our heads over it together.
    "Oh, look," she pointed, "there's the one I wanted to know.
Pimp.
Do you know what a pimp is?"
    "No."
    So she read it to me. And so I learned that afternoon, all the words that most young women from respectable families who were not married, and many who were married, did not know. "What does
ravished
mean?" I asked her.
    "Well, here, read it; it's right here."
    And so I learned another word. And I saw the pictures. And my face paled and I felt faint.
    But in the next moment when I looked at Sis Goose, she started laughing. And I started, too, and soon we were both helplessly laughing and rolling on the floor. And the more we thought about it, the funnier it seemed.
    "Do Ma and Pa do this?" I asked her.
    "How do you think you all were born?"
    I thought of Pa, stern, strict Pa, and I started another laughing fit. "Oh, oh, please," I begged her, "put the pamphlet back before I wet my pants."
    She secured it in back of some books on the shelf where she'd found it. "Naughty Gabe," she said, and I had another thought. "Oh, I won't be able to look at him at supper without bursting into laughter," I said.
    "What about your pa?"

    "Oh please, Sis, don't look at me at supper, please."
    She didn't.

    W E DID THINGS together like that, all the while we were growing up. We stole cookies from the pantry and ate them in our room at night in the dark. We told each other ghost stories in my bed, with the sheets over our heads, when we were supposed to be asleep. When the grownups were talking and laughing downstairs in the back parlor and we were supposed to be abed, she showed me a place she had discovered on the floor in our room, under the rug, where a trapdoor opened and the floor underneath was so thin you could hear every word said downstairs distinctly. She had a knack for intrigue, which, she said, she got from her father, the ship's captain.
    One day Sis Goose took me into Amelia's room and we did each other's faces over with the face and lip rouge Amelia sometimes wore when her beau took her out. I can't imagine what Ma would do if she caught us. She was down in the quarters, helping to deliver a baby.
    It was Gabe who caught us. He leaned against the doorjamb. "Well, you both look like tramps I've seen in New Orleans," he said.
    We stood, stunned. We'd learned what a tramp was from Gabe's pamphlet. "You going to tell, Gabe?" Sis Goose asked.
    "Tell who? Ma or Amelia?"

    "Both."
    "Love to tell Amelia. But no, I won't if you all take it off right now and promise not to do it again."
    We promised. We kissed him. I wondered if he'd become friendly with the tramps in New Orleans.

    W E WERE like sisters, Sis Goose and I, but we couldn't trade clothes because she was older and because she became a woman first. And then, at social gatherings, she started attracting the attention of young men. She was almost white, with just a hint of honey color, as if she'd stayed in the sun too long, and her complexion enhanced her beauty, added something to the clothes she wore. All the young men wanted to dance with her at balls and weddings. Oh, they danced with me, too, but that was part of the social scene, to be polite.
    Pa said it was up to Granville and Gabe to keep their eyes cast in our direction. They were always watchful of us at gatherings, of course, but there was one occasion where Gabe had to come to Sis Goose's defense.
    It was at a dance held after a morning's hunt. Of course, the women didn't go on the hunt. We languished about and