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Constance will bring you some of my bleaching salve. If you use it regularly, the freckles will fade.”
    “And the skin on my nose will be burned by the caustic chemicals that the salve contains.”
    “The burn is superficial and will heal. It’s a small price to pay for beauty.”
    Choose your battles, I repeated sternly and silently to myself and made a sandwich of my kippers and toast.
    “Well, Roosevelt’s been inaugurated for a second term,” Father said without taking his head from the Times. “And it looks as though the Industrial Workers of the World are calling themselves ‘Wobblies.’”
    Clearly Father had chosen to steer clear of this particular mother-daughter spat, so I cracked the top off my soft-boiled egg, spooned the contents onto my kipper sandwich, and began to devour it.
    “Louisa Pomphrey-Bell tells me that all of Melanie’s right-hand blouse and dress sleeves have had to be let out.” Mother was speaking now of our neighbors’ pretty, very popular, and equally vapid sixteen-year-old daughter, the one for whom suitors were falling all over themselves, seeking her attention. “It seems that every one of those sleeves has become too tight from the constant tennis she plays.”
    The statement was so utterly inane that neither Father nor I replied in any way. Melanie was one of the simpering, always-cheerful, and agreeable girls of Cambridge society whose lives were filled with trifles and, I was sure, had never drawn a single rebellious breath.
    The silence from her husband and daughter must have come as an insult to Mother, for a moment later she erupted. “That is a disgusting habit, Jane!” She was glaring at the sandwich in my hand.
    “What? Egg on my kippers? Mother, I don’t mean to be rude, but I think you’ve gone off your bean.”
    “That is rude! Archie, will you put down your paper and speak to your daughter? She seems to have lost the last vestiges of good manners she was ever taught under this roof.”
    Father folded his paper carefully and set it down next to his plate. He looked at me and then at Mother.
    “Well, Jane, you do seem to have a few freckles on your nose. And Sammie”—this was a pet name he used only in the privacy of our small family gatherings—“you seem to have a problem that I suspect has to do less with Jane’s egg on kipper than bone saw on femur.” Mother’s face was set in stone. “So why don’t you just come out with it?” he finished.
    “What good would it do? The two of you have already made up your minds. I have nothing to say about it. Besides, the damage is done. What decent man is going to want a woman— a twenty-year-old woman —who cuts up human bodies and smells like the basement of a charnel house?” She glared at Father. “I ask you!”
    I thought I detected a glimmer of guilt on my father’s face. We all knew that no decent English gentleman would want a woman such as myself to become his wife and the mother of his children.
    The thing was, I didn’t care.
    “I’m going out for my ride,” I said, standing from my chair. “I apologize for my rudeness, Mother. I love you, and I wish I could make you happier. But boat races and domestic bliss make me want to scream. Do you have any respect for me at all, or know one single important thing about me?”
    I looked at Father, then. There was nothing more to say. He wore an expression that bespoke both pride and remorse, the very sentiments warring in my own head. I took leave of the dining room. I heard a single, choked sob but, steeling myself from all further emotion, headed down the hall to the back door and out to the stables.
    Peter, the stable boy whom I liked the most for his gentle way with the horses and whom I trusted with my little secret, came out to meet me, averting his eyes from my scowling face.
    “It’s all right, Peter,” I said, trying to lighten my voice. “I’ll ride Leicester this morning.”
    “Which saddle, miss?” Peter whispered, knowing