Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

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.
    One day when Tanneke was in a good mood, I asked her why they did not take on more servants to make things easier. “With a big house like this, and your mistress’s wealth, and the master’s paintings,” I added, “could they not afford another maid? Or a cook?”
    “Huh,” Tanneke snorted. “They can barely manage to pay you.”
    I was surprised—the coins amounted to so little in my hand each week. It would take me years of work to be able to buy something as fine as the yellow mantle that Catharina kept so