Chapter 16

For whatever reason. the New Year was not celebrated. The terrible weather forced the girls to work like fury to keep the yard free of snow. Each morning they would both be shoveling away to keep the passage to the stables, dairy and cowsheds free. Caroline wondered whether she ought not to ask Grace if they could not at least wear some form of covering for their feet, as she looked down at her frozen blue toes and feared that she might lose them to frostbite.

As if to forestall any such request, Grace herself raised the matter, one morning when both girls were shivering in the kitchen, warming themselves before the fire and drinking from two steaming mugs of cocoa.

“No, Caroline! You may not have covering for your feet, you wicked girl! I know what you’ve been thinking and you are to stop thinking it this instant. As a penalty for harboring such thoughts, you will get straight back outside and not come back in till I tell you. Go on! Get outside this instant, and when you are finally allowed to come in there is a house to be thoroughly cleaned!”

When, after two terrible hours, a penitent and freezing cold Caroline was finally allowed inside again it took all day before feeling returned to her feet and she would never again ask for any alleviation of Grace’s strict code of total nudity at all times and in all weathers. This was the first time she had attracted Grace’s displeasure since that terrible three weeks in late summer and she vowed thenceforth to endure any hardship rather than incur such wrath again.