Lyddie pushed the door shut but stood just inside, uncertain how to proceed. How could she ask for Diana when she wasn’t even sure of her proper name?
But she needn’t have worried. Out of the chattering mass of bodies, Diana rose from her chair in the corner and came to where Lyddie stood. She smiled and her long, serious face creased into dimples. “I’m so glad you came. Let’s go upstairs where we can speak in something less than a shout.”
What a relief it was to climb the stairs and leave most of the racket two floors behind. There was no one else in Diana’s room. “What a treat,” Diana said, as though reading Lyddie’s mind. “Sometimes I’d sell my soul for a moment of quiet, wouldn’t you?”
Lyddie nodded. She suddenly felt shy around Diana, who seemed even more imposing away from the looms when her lovely, elegant voice was pitched rich and low like the call of a mourning dove.
“First, we need to get properly introduced,” she said. “I’m Diana Goss.” She must have noted a flicker of something in Lyddie’s face, because she added, “The infamous Diana Goss,” and dimpled into her lovely smile.
Lyddie reddened.
“So you’ve been warned.”
“Not really—”
“Well, then, you will be. I’m a friend of Sarah Bagley’s.” She watched Lyddie’s face for a reaction to the name, and when she got none tried another. “Amelia Sargeant? Mary Emerson? Huldah Stone? No? Well, you’ll hear those names soon enough. Our crime has been to speak out for better working conditions.” She looked at Lyddie again. “Yes, why, then, should the operatives themselves fear us? It is, dear Lyddie, the nature of slavery to make the slave fear freedom.”
“I’m not a slave,” Lyddie said, more fiercely than she intended.
“You’re not here for a lecture. I’m sorry. Tell me about yourself.”
It was hard for Lyddie to talk about herself. She’d had no practice. With Amelia and Prudence and Betsy, she didn’t need to. They—especially Amelia—seemed always to be telling her about herself or trying to make her like themselves. Besides, what was interesting about her? What would someone like Diana want to know?
“There’s Charlie,” she began. And before she knew it, she was explaining that she was here to earn the money to pay off her father’s debts, so she and Charlie could go home.
Diana did not smile ironically or laugh as Betsy was sure to. She did not once lecture her as though she were a slow child the way Amelia often did—or offer a single explanation as Prudence would have felt obliged to. No, the tall girl perched on the edge of a bed and listened silently and intently until Lyddie ran out of story to tell. Lyddie was a bit breathless, never having said so many words in the space of so few minutes in her life. And then, embarrassed to have talked so long about herself, she asked, “But I reckon you know how it is with families, ey?”
“Not really. I can hardly remember mine. Only my aunt that kept me until I was ten. And she’s gone now.”
Lyddie made as if to sympathize, but Diana shook it off. “I think of the mill as my family. It gives me plenty of sisters to worry about. But,” she said, “I don’t think I need to worry about you. You don’t know what it is not to work hard, do you?”
“I don’t mind work. The noise—”
Diana laughed. “Yes, the noise is terrible at the beginning, but you get accustomed to it somehow.”
Lyddie found that hard to believe, but if Diana said so …
“And I don’t suppose you think a thirteen-hour day overly long, either.”
Lyddie’s days had never been run on clocks. “I just work until the work is done,” she said. “But I never had leave to go paying calls in the evenings before.”
“And the wages seem fair?”
“I ain’t been paid yet, but from what I hear—”
“What did you get at the inn?”
“I don’t know. Fifty cents the week, I think. They sent it to Mama. Triphena said the mistress was like to forget as not. I suppose Charlie—” Lyddie stopped speaking. Neither Charlie nor her mother knew where she was!
“Is something the matter, Lyddie?”
“I haven’t wrote them. Charlie nor my mother. They don’t know where I am.” Suppose they needed her? How would they find her? Lyddie felt the panic rising. She was cut off from them all. She might as well have gone to the other side of the world. She was out of their reach. “When will they pay me?”
“If it’s paper you need—”
“It’s postage, too. I’d have to prepay. They don’t have the money to pay at that end.”
“I could manage postage.”