1664, Pages 3 - 24 Summary

The novel opens with sixteen-year-old Griet chopping vegetables for dinner when she hears voices outside her kitchen - first a woman's, then a man's. Even from the timbre of their voices, the girl can tell the visitors are rich. The couple enters the room and looks Griet over. Griet had laid the vegetables for the stew in a pie shape with five slices: red cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. The wealthy man wants to know why the vegetables have been laid out this way, and Griet replies that, "The colours fight when they are side by side, sir." The man is clearly intrigued, but his wife, who is very pregnant, is annoyed with the man's attention spent on a teenaged girl.

After the couple leaves, Griet's mother tells her that she is to start work as the couple's maid the...