“Thirty-eight guns,” Maggie said, even though Captain Gordon was not there to hear, nor admire her for making the count. Then, to cover the fact that she missed Captain Gordon, she turned to Sophia and said, “That’s the ship we’ll be sailing on.”
Sophia sighed. “I do wish that I was sailing, too. But Mother says she’ll send for us when she is certain that my daddie has our house built properly. He went ahead last year.”
“My cousin did, as well,” said Maggie. “He did marry onto Lily, all in secret, like, afore he went. I’d hoped she’d marry onto Matthew, but…” Her voice trailed off. She raised her free hand in a gesture she’d seen Lily often do, to shield her eyes against the sunlight on the water. “Lily says my cousin’s very nice, and that he’ll keep us safe.” Which made her think. She asked Sophia, “Who will keep you and your sister safe, with both your parents gone to Caledonia?”
“My aunt and uncle.”
That was good then. Just so long as she was not alone.
Kicking at a stone, Sophia added, “They are to meet us here this morning. They are staying at an inn nearby.”
“They do not live here?”
“No. They live far south of here,” she said, “near to Kirkcudbright.”
Maggie, having never heard of that town, heard its name the way Sophia voiced it now—Kir-COO-bree—and she stored it in her memory so that she could find it later on a map.
When they were finished walking on the pier and looking for a new adventure, Maggie said, “I ken what we should do,” and led the way along the shore to the two-story house where she and Lily shared an upstairs room and where Sophia and her mother and her older sister had arrived last night.
It was among the larger of the houses here, with crow-stepped gables and a slated roof instead of thatch. It had been built for Captain Reid, who’d been the skipper of a merchant ship, but he’d been lost at sea and now his widow took in boarders and did dressmaking and knew how to make sugar candy.
Maggie liked her very much.
As Maggie and Sophia came into the kitchen, Mrs. Reid looked round and asked them, “Well? What is it that you’re after?” But she asked it cheerfully, as though she, too, were pleased that Maggie had at long last found a friend.
“Can we look at the book of maps?” asked Maggie.
“‘May we.’ And say ‘please.’”
“May we look at the book of maps, please?” It had not been published as a book of maps—it was a book of Scotland’s history, but within its illustrations it contained a series of impressive maps that Maggie much admired.
The book belonged in Captain Reid’s small library, and Mrs. Reid was careful who had access to that room, but after having watched for many nights while Lily read to Maggie from the tales of Don Quixote, Mrs. Reid had one night opened up that room to them and said, “You may find more to read the child in here.”
There was a writing table in that room as well, so Maggie once again began to have her lessons every day with pen and copy book, which made her very happy.
Mrs. Reid remarked to Lily, “She does have a lovely hand. You’ve taught her well.” She’d gone to school herself, in Glasgow, and had been apprenticed there to a dressmaker of good reputation who had served fine ladies. “If you wish the child to do the same,” she said to Lily once, “you will correct her way of speaking, and your own, so none will judge your status by it.”
Lily had apparently been taking this advice, and she had altered her own way of speaking as a model and reminder so that Maggie had begun to also say “you” now instead of “ye,” and “know” instead of “ken,” and speak more like the English.
Wishing to impress her friend, she tried hard to remember this when Mrs. Reid retrieved the book of maps. “Come,” Maggie told Sophia, “you can show me where you live.”
But when she started to sit at the kitchen table, Mrs. Reid advised her, “Not there, I’ve been mixing things. Go through into the parlor. I believe your cousin’s still playing at cards with Mrs. Paterson.”
It still felt odd to think of Lily as her cousin, but James Graeme was her cousin, and now Lily was his wife, so that made Lily Maggie’s cousin also. It did take some getting used to.
In the parlor, they indeed found Lily with Sophia’s mother and Sophia’s older sister, Anna, who was too sophisticated to come join them as they spread the map book open on the floor and searched to find Kirkcudbright.