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room, Sundays, so we’ve four nights t’ go on that bit o’ nub. But tes dark as a blatherin’ sack wi’ no moon t’night. Are ee hungry? I ‘ad a pennorth o’ broken biscuits, but I et ‘em.”
    “I was before; I think I’m just numb now.” Lily took a last look around at the distempered walls and bare floorboards, the sparse, ill-assorted furniture, the spotted mirror and chipped washbasin. The room was cold now—what must it be like in February? She imagined waking up shivering, finding ice on the water in the jug, the face flannel frozen solid. She blew out the candle and crept between the sheets of the cast-off iron four-poster—two-poster now; the other two had been cut down so the bed could be wedged sideways under the eaves. Everything smelled of damp and mildew and rot. The mattress was lumpy and ridiculously thin. Lowdy pushed half of the hard pillow over for Lily to share. She murmured, “Thank you,” and thought about her new bedmate.
    For herself, Lily would probably not have welcomed a pathetic-looking intruder to her small room and smaller bed in the wee hours of the morning. But Lowdy had seemed genuinely glad for the company, causing Lily to wonder if domestic life in this great mansion of a place was lonely sometimes for a young girl. Lowdy was seventeen, and had worked here for two years. She was short-legged, small-breasted, and wide-hipped, and her solid little body looked strong, much stronger than Lily’s. She had pretty black hair, cut short, and a sensible face. But a chipped front tooth appeared whenever she smiled, which was often, and then she looked playful and a little sly. Her thick Cornish accent was completely unfamiliar to Lily, almost Slavic-sounding if she let her mind wander and didn’t concentrate. Luckily the girl spoke slowly, with a phlegmatic deliberateness mat usually allowed Lily to decipher the meaning of one sentence before she started another.
    “What’s it like to work here?” Lily whispered in the darkness. But what she wanted to know was what “the master” was like, and if the scene she’d just witnessed downstairs was typical or an aberration. Lowdy was a heavy sleeper, however, and knew nothing of gunshots and crashing chandeliers; and since Lily had promised the man named Cobb that she would say nothing of the incident, she could see no way to ask the question directly.
    “Oh, no worser’n any an’ betterer’n most.” Lowdy yawned and settled on her side. “Tes Mrs. ’Owe you d’ want t’ be watchin’ out for. Her’s as mean as a splatty ol’ pig, I’d as lief bait a bull as cross ’er.”
    “What does she do?”
    “She hits, is what. Enid, the girl last but one afore ee, she smoted ’er onct so rough-like, she breaked ’er arm. An’ Sidony, the scullery maid as was ’ere in September month two years past—before me, but I heard of it—she falled down the dairy step and near died. Naught was said above-stairs, but below they all knowed it were ’Owe. An’ the maid no more’n a cheeil at the time, a little small tiddler o’ thirteen.”
    Lily lay still, appalled. Tales got spread in tight-knit households, she told herself; gossip blossomed and grew. Surely Lowdy was exaggerating.
    “An’ ee did ought t’ stay clear o’ Trayer as well, for what he does is worser’n hittin’.”
    That had the ring of truth. She heard Lowdy yawn again and spoke quickly, before her sleepy informant could drift off. “What’s the master like? To—work for, I mean. Mrs. Howe said he’s very particular about the maids.”
    Lowdy snorted. “Phaw, tes a cabby lie. Master bain’t in mind we’re alive, has eyes for naught but ‘is work.”
    “His work?”
    “Ais, ’im’s a great squire, owns a mine an’ land an’ sheep an’ what-not. Mrs. ’Owe d’ say such a thing about ’im bein’ particular t’ make up for losin’ so many girls. She can’t keep ‘em, is what.”
    “Why do you stay, Lowdy?”
    “Pick me liver, where