Maid for Friendship

5th April 1912

We didn’t eat breakfast with the other twenty maids this morning. We ate with Mister himself. He lectured us about being good and faithful maids (aiming that at Lucy) and looking the part (aiming that at me) He bid us a good day at the end of a hearty meal of toast and jam. I felt weird being served by Danielle, one of my close friends. When I got up to collect our dishes Mister only said.
“Sit, Danielle dishes!” He didn’t even look at her as he called her over. I used to obey him like that, I couldn’t help thinking. Only then did I realize how naïve I had been, Mister was only treating us so nicely because we were about to make him a lot of money. I was eating his so called “kindness” right out of his hands. He then informed us that Mistress would be here in a while to get some suitable clothes fitted for us.

Mary and Naomi dressed and prepared us for Mistress’s arrival today. I disliked every minute of it. I openly told them how much I disliked being served by my friends. They tried to hush me, afraid Mister may be listening, but I wouldn’t stop. I only stopped when I convinced Mary to allow me to bathe myself. She daren’t usually break Mister’s rules.

Once prepared Lucy and I threw pebbles in the lake to pass time until Mistress came. We were dismissed from any duties yesterday. I loved having all this free time to myself and Lucy, but I knew inside I was just shifting more duties to my friends shoulders. I felt like I had betrayed them, and even considered suggesting that Lucy went with Mistress alone; but the Titanic, and being bought with Lucy had always been my dream, and now that they were all coming true, no guilt should stop me from living the life!

When the door of our bedroom opened Lucy and I were both surprised. But Mistress entered with Mister and a line of various young women. Mister left us when we were told to get undressed so we could be measured for new clothing.

It took hours and I was ultimately bored. Lucy looked gleeful and blissfully happy. Fashion was all she ever wanted; it had nothing to do with me. We were first measured, then tried on different clothing in all these wonderful colours I’d never heard of to find which suited us best. I thought we were done by then, but then we had to try on different materials, to see which of those suited us best as well. We showed Mistress our few pieces of clothing and she said we should just give that to the other maids because it was poor quality. Mister was there again at that point, and looked extremely angered by what Mistress had just said.

We worked until deep in the evening. When Mistress left Lucy dressed into her old night gown and let down her blonde curly hair.
“I’ve had enough excitement today to last me a lifetime. All those clothes were so elegant!”She said as she climbed into bed. I rolled over so I stared up at the dry cracked ceiling of our room. I sighed into the warm silence of night, listening to the birds cheeping and owls hooting as I drifted into a peaceful sleep.