“Behave well,” Missus Nellie warned us, as we waited in the rain for the coach to arrive “don't make Miss Carlton cross with you, no tricks or mischief. You don't want you and Elizabeth being sent back here.” 

The orphanage taught me it was unpropper but I couldn't help myself, so I reached out and hugged Missus Nellie. She was tense at first but then hugged me back but quickly pulled away. 

“No time for tears Cassandra, you're getting a mother today.” 

Once we were able to get in the coach, the coachman cracked his whip and off we went, and Missus Nellie faded away in the blur of the crowd and the mist. It took a long while to get to Miss Carlton’s house as we were going from a city in England to what looked like a countryside. While we were waiting to come upon our exit, it soon went from city streets to rural moors with few houses near it, just open fields and forests.

“Do you think Miss Carlton will be nice?” Elizabeth asked me, trying to sound hopeful and longingly looking out the window at the rain and trees.

“I don't know, but hopefully she is a nice lady who likes children and will treat us better than Missus Harris did.” I responded to her, trying sounding hopeful, but also sounding doubtful. She fell asleep against my shoulder.

It was raining when we arrived, and Miss Carlton was not outside to greet us, it was improper, but I assumed that she must be doing something or not wanting to be drenched as we were. We knocked on the door and she opened it, Miss Carlton was dressed like any other propper woman, she was wearing a walking suit, probably after she ran errands and her long dark hair was in an updo, a hat was held in place with a hat pin, she was dressed very nicely by the standards we were taught in our etiquette lessons. We hoped she would be kind and have a nice house for us to live in. As we hoped, her home was large and tidy, but it was creepy of sort, it was too perfect, there were shelves of books and a large Victorian style fireplace. Miss Carlton eyed us up and down with a stern expression almost as if she was judging us, we were in our orphanage clothing which was less than nice, it was a dark red dress that fell below our knees with a pleated skirt and a ragged red bow, our shoes were thin soled and ment for city streets, and our hair? Well it was a sight, Elizabeths was a frizzy mess of tawny brown, mine a black mop of curls. So I assume we were quite an eyesore for a lady like her.