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That’s where I’m bound for.”
    I wanted to ask him more, but someone called “Nat?” and the print-room door began to open; he sprang towards it guiltily and went in.
    We served the men breakfast at eight o’clock: bread, butter, beer and slices of venison pie from the shop a few doors down.
    I would not join the men at table as Mary did, but took some bread and beer and sat slightly apart, near the fire. One of the cats – a little striped one – jumped up on my lap and began to turn round and round.
    Thou’d best not settle, cat, I thought: I’ve work to do. But I stroked it, and it purred.
    The men ate heartily. I served more venison pie, and poured more beer. They all acknowledged me, and Simon Race asked me about my family and said he hoped I’d take to town life. He’s kind, I thought, and I knew I should not have prejudged him.
    I finished eating before the others and went out to sweep the long passage.
    Mary had promised me that one evening we would sit down together and she would show me how to write the letters of the alphabet. Meantime, I spent the rest of that week learning what had to be done around house and shop: the pewter and cutlery scoured with sand, the rooms swept and dusted, water drawn, fires tended; milk, beer, meat and pies bought. I spent much of my time shopping, and that pleased me. There were different markets most days, for corn, leather, vegetables or butter; one day there was a cattle market and the streets filled with slowly moving herds and the smell of manure. I would move among the crowds with my basket on my arm and the housekeeping money in my pocket, and when I’d bought the things Mary asked for, I’d go home along different streets, discovering a sweetmeats shop, a stay-maker’s, a tailor’s and a glove-maker’s, all with their counters on the street and maids and apprentices serving.
    Mary had told me that the glovers in the High Street, the Minton family, were Friends of Truth. On fifth-day, when I paused there, a tall fair girl of about eighteen was serving. She smiled, and spoke to me, and I told her I worked at the stationer’s.
    “Then thou must be Mary Faulkner’s new girl?”
    “Yes. I started this week.”
    “And a Friend, I heard?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s good. We are too few our age in Meeting.”
    I felt flattered to be included in her age, for she seemed a woman grown to me.
    “I’m Judith Minton,” she said. “I have a sister, Abigail, and two brothers, Thomas and Joseph. Thou’ll meet them on first-day; and the other young ones.”
    “Is it a big meeting?”
    “Sixty or so.”
    My eyes must have widened, for she said, “But not all come every time. Thou’ll come?”
    “Yes. I will.”
    Perhaps I went to morning meeting that first-day. If I did, I don’t remember. But I shan’t forget the meeting in the afternoon.
    I went with Mary and Nat. The meeting was held in Cross Street, at the Seven Stars, an alehouse owned by Friends. The room was behind the inn, with an entrance from the yard.
    I stayed close to Mary at first, but then Judith came and drew me away to sit with the other older girls. Her sister, Abigail, with fair hair curling from under her cap, was about twelve; Bridie Hughes was Abigail’s friend; Martha Jevons was a solemn-looking girl of fourteen; Kezia, her sister, walked crooked with a withered leg.
    The room had benches and stools arranged in a rough circle several rows deep, and an upturned tub on which I supposed someone might stand to speak if the spirit moved them. It seemed a proper place to me after the barn at Eaton Bellamy, though I missed the high-ceilinged space and the scent of hay that for me was always linked to worship. Everyone seemed to have their own regular place and moved towards it, including an elderly dog which settled at its master’s feet. Judith made space for me on a bench where the girls sat in a line, several rows back, under the eye of a fierce-looking older woman who frowned when Abigail