As Aunt Twice threw off her coat and hat, quickly lifting down a long muslin apron from a nail on the wall, the girl stood up and produced a wide yawn. Casting curious sideways glances in Emily’s direction, she sidled over to the stove and began to stir the soup with a large iron spoon.
“Soup’s done,” she said dully, gazing into the pot.
“Thank you, Tilly,” replied Aunt Twice. She finished tying on her apron with fumbling, distraught fingers. “I’ll manage now.”
Emily was beginning to wonder if her aunt had forgotten all about her as she stood waiting with her travelling bag at her feet. But apron now on, Aunt Twice hurried back to her. She had an arm out as if to put it around Emily, but a glance over her shoulder showed her that Tilly’s eyes were locked on them in an inquisitive stare. With a strange tightening of the lips, Aunt Twice quickly dropped her arm.
“Tilly,” she said, “this is my niece, Emily. Emily, this is Tilly, who helps with the cooking and cleaning and lives here as well.”
Emily immediately dropped a polite curtsy. “How do you do, Tilly.”
Tilly, looking somewhat surprised that anyone should be addressing her in this manner, herself dropped a muttered “How do” into the soup. A blink of an eye later, however, she was once again examining Emily with a sly look of appraisal.
“Tilly, I haven’t time, so will you please show Emily to her room? It will be the small one next to mine. Then show her where she may wash. You may go with Tilly, Emily.” Even as she was speaking, the harried, frightened look Emily was now coming to expect had returned to Aunt Twice’s face. She pulled out a ring of keys, which hung by a chain to the belt of her dress. Selecting one key with nervous fingers, she hastened to the large icebox and inserted the key into the heavy padlock.
A moment later, Emily found herself looking into the most magnificent display of food she had ever seen, even at Mama’s and Papa’s grandest parties. There was a large ham, a golden roasted turkey, fresh green salads, a bowl of plump red strawberries, a vanilla cream cake all decorated with pale green flutings and flowers, orange and lemon jellies, a chocolate custard, small cakes and cookies of all descriptions—almost everything imaginable. So that unappetizing soup on the stove was not the only food served for dinner after all, Emily decided with relief. She could hardly pull her eyes away from the icebox.
Tilly laid her spoon on the stove. “Quits y’r gawping and come with me!” She darted a cunning look sideways to see how this command would sit with Aunt Twice. But if Aunt Twice, who was busy pulling a spun-sugar confection from the ice box, heard Tilly, she gave no sign of it.
Though nearly twice Emily’s size, Tilly made no offer to help her with the travelling bag, so once again she picked it up herself. She had no idea yet where she was to go, but even though Aunt Twice had not taken her upstairs, she still supposed there must be a room somewhere in the house for her. She turned toward the dining room door.
“Servants’ quarters ain’t that way,” Tilly said. She sauntered to another door directly across from the one to the dining room, flung it open, and stood waiting for Emily with a strange glint in her eyes.
Servants’ quarters! Well, if she had to scrub sinks, scour pots, and empty slop jars, wasn’t that what Emily had become now, a servant? And didn’t that mean a room in the cellar? Her heart felt as if it were sinking right down to the toes of her white, high-button shoes as she made her journey across the kitchen toward Tilly.
“You mights as well get y’r peepers off the big icebox what’s got a lock on it,” Tilly said as soon as they had entered a dark, dank entry, thickly perfumed by the contents of an open garbage pail. “It ain’t for you!”
Emily swallowed the dry lump that had risen in her throat. “J-j-just like the peppermints,” she whispered.
“You knows ’bout them things already?” Tilly asked. She giggled into her hand as if she found this thought enormously amusing.
By now they had started down a long, steep flight of stone steps, feebly lit by a tiny speck of gaslight at the bottom. Down, down went Tilly without a backward glance, and bump, bump went Emily, following behind. All she could think of right then was saving herself from hurtling downward and breaking every bone in her body.
She reached the bottom step at last and found they were in a room much larger than the entry above, but equally dark and dank. And though not reeking with the scent of garbage, it was heavy with the must and mold of a quarter of a century. From this room, dark passages branched off in two directions. Tilly turned to the left. She had gone only a few feet, however, when a slight scratching sound overhead caused her to hesitate and look up.
“Rat,” she said matter-of-factly. “You either gets used to ’em”—she looked back at Emily with lips compressed into a wicked grin—“or you doesn’t!”
Emily clutched her travelling bag more tightly. On they went, passing one door after another, all firmly closed. Except for the hollow sounds made by their footsteps on the stone floor and the bumping of the bag against Emily’s knees, there was a deep underground silence all around them. But as Tilly started to turn at last through the open door of a very tiny room, a faint
