Kitty stared past Sally Rose’s golden head into the dark street. Their bedroom was over the kitchen, and she could hear Gran’s brisk footsteps trotting about below. Gran was roasting mutton to feed tomorrow’s customers, but she had sent the girls upstairs to get their beauty sleep. “I’ve slipped out to our old meeting place in the graveyard every night, but he was never there,” she went on. “But tonight it’s Tuesday again, so he has to be. He just has to be there tonight.” She pulled on a pair of delicate thread stockings, and thrust her feet into high-heeled slippers with roses on the toes. Kitty eyed them disapprovingly. “As I remember the old graveyard, it’s full of holes and hummocks,” she said. “You’ll trip and fall in those shoes, if you go walking there.” “I don’t expect to do much walking,” said Sally Rose. Then a mischievous light shone out of her hazel eyes. “Kitty! Wait till you see what I bought today. The shops are full of bargains, with all the Tories gone out of town. You’ll have to help me, I think.” She scurried to the clothespress, reached inside it, and brought out the most hideous contraption Kitty had ever seen. It was a pair of stays, she supposed, but what a pair! A long cruel case of whalebone and stiff buckram, high in the back, very low in the front, pinched and pointed like the body of some vicious insect. That it was covered with white velvet and sewn with brilliants did not make it any the less frightening. Kitty got a cramp in her stomach as she looked at it. Her chest tightened, and for a moment she had trouble in breathing. But Sally Rose had a gleam in her eye. “I got this at the staymaker’s this morning,” she said. “He ordered it for a rich Tory lady, but she fled away to join the British in Boston, so he let me have it cheap.” “I should think he might,” said Kitty. “Why it’s hardly a foot around the middle. You’re slender, but not that slender, Sally Rose. How do you think to lace it up?” Sally Rose smiled engagingly and stepped into the dreadful garment, dragging it over her hips and around her slight form. “Oh, you’ll have to lace it for me, Kit,” she announced. “I’ll have a truly fashionable figure now. I always wanted one. Remember, Gerry’s been looking at those rich Boston ladies all the week long. I don’t want him to feel disappointed when he sees me.” Kitty climbed down from the bed and went to her cousin. She picked up the ends of the lacings and began to weave them into the metal hooks. Sally Rose stood there beaming, holding the stays in place. “Hurry and lace them up, Kit,” she urged. “It will be easier if I can slip out while Gran is still at her work. Before she comes upstairs, I mean to be gone.”