He looked as if he would say something, but instead he shook off the girls and strode down the Oude Langendijck.

He had not said a word to me since we discussed the color and shape of vegetables.

I woke very early on Sunday, for I was excited to go home. I had to wait for Catharina to unlock the front door, but when I heard it swing open I came out to find Maria Thins with the key.

“My daughter is tired today,” she said as she stood aside to let me out. “She will rest for a few days. Can you manage without her?”

“Of course, madam,” I replied, then added, “and I may always ask you if I have questions.”

Maria Thins chuckled. “Ah, you’re a cunning one, girl. You know whose pot to spoon from. Never mind, we can do with a bit of cleverness around here.” She handed me some coins, my wages for the days I had worked. “Off you go now, to tell your mother all about us, I suspect.”

I slipped away before she could say more, crossed Market Square, past those going to early services at the New Church, and hurried up the streets and canals that led me home. When I turned into my street I thought how different it felt already after less than a week away. The light seemed brighter and flatter, the canal wider. The plane trees lining the canal stood perfectly still, like sentries waiting for me.

Agnes was sitting on the bench in front of the house. When she saw me she called inside, “She’s here!” then ran to me and took my arm. “How is it?” she asked, not even saying hello. “Are they nice? Do you work hard? Are there any girls there? Is the house very grand? Where do you sleep? Do you eat off fine plates?”

I laughed and would not answer any of her questions until I had hugged my mother and greeted my father. Although it was not very much, I felt proud to hand over to my mother the few coins in my hand. This was, after all, why I was working.

My father came to sit outside with us and hear about my new life. I gave my hands to him to guide him over the front stoop. As he sat down on the bench he rubbed my palms with his thumb. “Your hands are chapped,” he said. “So rough and worn. Already you have the scars of hard work.”

“Don’t worry,” I answered lightly. “There was so much laundry waiting for me because they didn’t have enough help before. It will get easier soon.”

My mother studied my hands. “I’ll soak some bergamot in oil,” she said. “That will keep your hands soft. Agnes and I will go into the country to pick some.”

“Tell us!” Agnes cried. “Tell us about them.”

I told them. Only a few things I didn’t mention—how tired I was at night; how the Crucifixion scene hung at the foot of my bed; how I had slapped Cornelia; how Maertge and Agnes were the same age. Otherwise I told them everything.

I passed on the message from our butcher to my mother. “That is kind of him,” she said, “but he knows we have no money for meat and will not take such charity.”

“I don’t think he meant it as charity,” I explained. “I think he meant it out of friendship.”

She did not answer, but I knew she would not go back to the butcher.

When I mentioned the new butchers, Pieter the father and son, she raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

Afterwards we went to services at our church, where I was surrounded by familiar faces and familiar words. Sitting between Agnes and my mother, I felt my back relaxing into the pew, and my face softening from the mask I had worn all week. I thought I might cry.

Mother and Agnes would not let me help them with dinner when we came back home. I sat with my father on the bench in the sun. He held his face up to the warmth and kept his head cocked that way all the time we talked.

“Now, Griet,” he said, “tell me about your new master. You hardly said a word about him.”

“I haven’t seen much of him,” I replied truthfully. “He is either in his studio, where no one is to disturb him, or he is out.”

“Taking care of Guild business, I expect. But you have been in his studio—you told us about the cleaning and the measurements, but nothing about the painting he is working on. Describe it to me.”

“I don’t know if I can in such a way that you will be able to see it.”

“Try. I have little to think of now except for memories. It will give me pleasure to imagine a painting by a master, even if my mind creates only a poor imitation.”

So I tried to describe the woman tying pearls around her neck, her hands suspended, gazing at herself in the mirror, the light from the window bathing her face and her yellow mantle, the dark foreground that separated her from us.

My father listened intently, but his own face was not illuminated until I said, “The light on the back wall is so warm that looking at it feels the way the sun feels on your face.”

He nodded and smiled, pleased now that he understood.

“This is what you like best about your new life,” he said presently. “Being in the studio.”

The only thing, I thought, but did not say.

When we ate dinner I tried not to compare it with that in the house at Papists’ Corner, but already I had become accustomed to meat and good rye bread. Although my mother was a better cook than Tanneke, the brown bread was dry, the vegetable stew tasteless with no fat to flavor it. The room, too, was different—no marble tiles, no thick silk curtains, no tooled leather chairs. Everything was simple and clean, without ornamentation. I loved it because I knew it, but I was aware now of its dullness.

At the end of the day it was hard saying good-bye to my parents—harder than when I had first left, because this time I knew what I was going back to. Agnes walked with me as far as Market Square. When we were alone, I asked her how she was.

“Lonely,” she replied, a sad word from a young girl. She had been lively all day but had now grown subdued.

“I’ll come every Sunday,” I promised. “And perhaps during the week I can come quickly to say hello after I’ve gone for the meat or fish.”

“Or I can come to see you when you are out buying things,” she suggested, brightening.

We did manage to meet in the Meat Hall several times. I was always glad to see her—as long as I was alone.

I began to find my place at the house on the Oude Langendijck. Catharina, Tanneke and Cornelia were all difficult at times, but usually I was left alone to my work. This may have been Maria Thins’ influence. She had decided, for her own reasons, that I was a useful addition, and the others, even the children, followed her example.

Perhaps she felt the clothes were cleaner and better bleached now that I had taken on the laundry. Or that the meat was more tender now that I chose it. Or that he was happier with a clean studio. These first two things were true. The last, I did not know. When he and I finally spoke it was not about my cleaning.

I was careful to deflect any praise for better housekeeping from myself. I did not want to make enemies. If Maria Thins liked the meat, I suggested it was Tanneke’s cooking that made it so. If Maertge said her apron was whiter than before, I said it was because the summer sun was particularly strong now.

I avoided Catharina when I could. It had been clear from the moment she’d seen me chopping vegetables in my mother’s kitchen that she disliked me. Her mood was not improved by the baby she carried, which made her ungainly and nothing like the graceful lady of the house she felt herself to be. It was a hot summer too, and the baby was especially active. It began to kick whenever she walked, or so she said. As she grew bigger she went about the house with a tired, pained look. She took to staying in bed later and later, so that Maria Thins took over her keys and unlocked the studio door for me in the morning. Tanneke and I began to do more and more of her work—looking after the girls, buying things for the house, changing the baby.