In some things Anna could not have her way, and when her mother and sisters insisted that they would not keep a separate table for Markham, as they called Adah, she yielded, secretly bidding Pamelia see that everything was comfortable and nice for Mrs. Markham and her little boy.  There was hardly need for this injunction, for in the kitchen Adah was regarded as far superior to those who would have trampled her down, and her presence among the servants was not without its influence, softening Jim’s rough, loud ways, and making both Dixson and Pamelia more careful of their words and manners when she was with them.  Much, too, they grew to love and pet the little Willie, who, accustomed to the free range of Spring Bank, asserted the same right at Terrace Hill, going where he pleased, putting himself so often in Mrs. Richards’ way, that she began at last to notice him, and if no one was near, to caress the handsome boy.  Asenath and Eudora held out longer, but even they were not proof against Willie’s winning ways.

It was many weeks ere Adah wrote to Alice Johnson, and when at last she did, she said of Terrace Hill: 

“I am happier here than I at first supposed it possible.  The older ladies were so proud, so cold, so domineering, that it made me very wretched, in spite of sweet Anna’s kindness.  But there has come a perceptible change, and they now treat me civilly, if nothing more, while I do believe they are fond of Willie, and would miss him if he were gone.”

Adah was right in this conjecture; for had it now been optional with the Misses Richards whether Willie should go or stay, they would have kept him there from choice, so cheery and pleasant he made the house.  Adah was still too pretty, too stylish, to suit their ideas of a servant; but when, as time passed on, they found she did not presume at all on her good looks, but meekly kept her place as Anna’s maid or companion, they dropped the haughty manner they had at first assumed, and treated her with civility, if not with kindness.

With Anna it was different.  Won by Adah’s gentleness and purity, she came at last to love her almost as much as if she had been a younger sister.  Adah was not a servant to her, but a companion, a friend, with whom she daily held familiar converse, learning from her much that was good, and prizing her more and more as the winter weeks went swiftly by.

Since the morning when Adah confided to her a part of her history, she had never alluded to it or intimated a desire to hear more; but she thought much about it, revolving in her mind various expedients for finding and bringing back to his allegiance the recreant lover.

“If I were not bound to secrecy,” she thought one day, as she sat waiting for Adah’s return from the post office, “if I were not bound to secrecy, I would tell Brother John, and perhaps he might think of something.  Men’s wits are sometimes better than women’s.  When she comes back from the office I mean to see what she’ll say.”