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why he looked so aghast. Was she supposed to wait for him to ring the bell for her? She had no patience for inaction, or the indolence of propriety. Hannah acutely remembered going to her mother in tears of laughter one time when she’d read some English melodrama in which the heroine had never once in her eighteen years of existence put on her own stockings.
It is true
, Cora had said with a rueful smile.
English ladies—real English ladies—are notorious for doing as little as possible, except ride to the hounds. There are servants for everything else
. Young Hannah had scrunched up her face into unaccustomed earnestness and said,
Then, Mama, I am glad you moved to Germany. I should not like to do nothing all day. And shouldn’t the servants get awfully tired?
    There were workers in Der Teufel, of course, and she supposed technically they were servants, but they were employees who became friends and happened to sweep and wash dishes, not some lesser form of life evolved to do all of the unpleasant chores. She had no class divide in her life. Certainly, her father had owned the cabaret, and if a city official was sick behind the potted palm Mr. Morgenstern wasn’t the one to clean it up, but when they celebrated some new act, everyone from the busboys to the stars drank champagne and kissed one another.
    â€œThank you so much, Hardy,” she said. “Perhaps when I have the leisure you can show me around the garden. I am so fond of flowers, though I know nothing about how to grow them, only how to catch them.” She closed her eyes a moment, recalling a massive bouquet of golden roses an old man had shakily thrown to her after (what else?) a sheep song. She’d buried her face in the blooms, dizzy with sweetness, the petals like a lover’s fingertips . . .
    Dreaming, remembering, she pulled the bell.
    She raised her beatific face to the answering butler, Coombe, who thought he had seen something similar reproduced in one of the improving circulars to which he subscribed, a portrait of Saint Someone in Ecstasy, perhaps Theresa, or Cecelia, or even Francis. He was so taken by her shining, transported countenance that it was a full three seconds before he noticed her shabby clothes, the dark circles under her eyes, her gloveless little paws, and mustered a severe frown that still contained, visible only in a twitch in its sinister corner, a hint of avuncular benevolence.
    â€œWe do not use the front door,” he said, the
we
sounding more royal than inclusive.
    â€œWhat door do we use, then?” Hannah asked, sounding once again quite German in her perplexity.
    â€œBack entrance only, strictly observed,” he said, then, allowing himself a little joke, “except, of course, on stair-scrubbing days.” He shut the door in her face.
    â€œBut . . .” Hannah attempted.
    He opened it enough to point to her right, and shut it with stern finality. Then he went to inform the housekeeper that the new kitchen maid had arrived, and was going to need a good deal of watching.
    Mrs. Wilcox, the housekeeper, sighed deeply, a luxury she only allowed herself in the company of her old friend Coombe. “It’s Himself’s digestion will suffer for it. Cook’s in such a state, I don’t know how she’ll ever cope with an untrained creature.”
    Cook was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or quitting, or perhaps jumping for joy, or all three, because only a week before, she’d been humble under-cook Sally Mayweather, a step above kitchen maid, a vast canyon below the lofty Cook. But the old cook, Trapp, had fallen ill and been sent to a sister in Lyme Regis to recover, which, the doctors owned, she might never do, and now her underling had taken her position. It was an honor, a significant increase in salary—and a job of terrifying responsibility requiring the strategy of a general combined with the steady hand of a surgeon, the aesthetics of