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liquid, turning moist and brown. Caroline looked at the last bowl with a great deal of satisfaction. She hadn’t spilled a drop.
    “Have some, Nestor,” she called out to the butler, presenting him with his serving before I could get to it.
    Nestor took the bowl from her hands and then sat down at the wooden table in the centre of the room. Catching my eye, he gestured for me to do the same. I hesitated, and shook my head, thinking I should wait for Caroline to take hers first.
    The mere sight of food had started my belly rumbling. The thought that bread could be kept in a house with no danger of it summoning a pack of rats was nothing short of a miracle to me. How much food was there? It seemed to be coming out of every cupboard and corner and I imagined that if I could steal into the kitchen without anyone knowing, I could take whatever I wanted. Sitting in the middle of the floor, I’d eat until crumbs and grease were dripping from my chin.
    “I took the liberty of filling the kettle for the lady’s tea,” Nestor informed Caroline before lifting his bowl to his lips. “It should be plenty hot by now.”
    “That’s fine,” she replied, bringing out a silver tea service and placing it on a tray at the other end of the table.
    I waited for a moment when I might be of use to her. This, however, only caused more trouble. The next time she turned around we were nose to nose and I could see by her scowl that my persistence had angered her. She brushed past me in a huff, and I gave up, taking one of the remaining bowls of bread and broth and sitting down across from Nestor. His eyes crinkled into a smile as I settled in my chair.
    Free from my hovering, Caroline glided between table and cupboards, artfully arranging delicate bowls and plates, filling them with sugar and milk, grapes and pears. Now that there was distance between us, I could see she had a sense of grace about her. Like the tiny wooden woman who inhabited the cuckoo clock in the window of the jeweller’s shop on Second Avenue, her waist was constantly moving in sympathy with her skirts, turning round first this way, then that.
    “Where’d the lady get to last night?” she asked Nestor as she snipped at the stems on a bunch of grapes with a small pair of scissors.
    “Chrystie Street, I believe,” he answered, looking to me for confirmation.
    I gave him a nod before taking a sip of broth. It tasted of beef, rich with salt and onion, so good I forgot myself. Gulping and slurping, I carried on until every bit of the bread had slithered down my throat.
    “Went slumming again, did she?” Caroline asked, one eyebrow arching. “You think she would’ve learned, after the last one …”
    Staring at Caroline, Nestor tipped the edge of his bowl against the table with his finger. The last of its contents spilled out from it, running in a stream, straight towards a folded, white napkin that the housekeeper hadn’t yet placed on the tray.
    “Chrystie Street,” she muttered as she scrambled to rescue the napkin. “Never heard of it … sure hope it’s better than Ludlow.”
    If she’d bothered to ask me, I would’ve said with great confidence that it was. I would have told her that the people on Chrystie Street were a cut above, that everything they did was a matter of pride, and that if she’d never been there, she was all the poorer because of it.
    I would’ve been lying, of course. While Ludlow and Chrystie streets both had their share of falling-down tenements, Ludlow had sewers and Chrystie Street had none. All slums are not created equal.
    When Caroline turned away, Nestor nicked a pear from the bowl of fruit sitting on the tea tray. Cutting it into slices with his pocket knife, he offered me a piece. Made bold by Caroline’s disdain, I took it.
    The fruit was sweet and juicy in my mouth, not like the mealy, past-ripe pears sold on street corners or at Tompkins Market. Those pears floated in buckets of syrup for weeks at a time, young girls