Katherine Tyler Quotes

“Would there be room in the boat for me to ride to shore with you?” she begged. “I know it’s silly, but there is America so close to me for the first time in my life – I can’t bear not to set my foot upon it!” “What a child you are, Kit,” smiled Mrs. Eaton. “Sometimes ‘tis hard to believe you are sixteen.”

“The captain did not even glance in her direction. Kit was not used to being ignored, and her temper flared. When a thin whimper from the child was silenced by a vicious cuff, her anger boiled over. Without a second’s deliberation she acted. Kicking off her buckled shoes and dropping the woolen cloak, she plunged headlong over the side of the boat.”

“Sometimes, as she sat knitting, aware that William’s eyes were on her face, she felt her breath tightening in a way that was strange and not unpleasant. Then, just as suddenly, rebellion would rise in her. He was so sure! Without even asking, he was reckoning on her as deliberately as he calculated his growing pile of lumber.”

“She would go as a single woman who must work for her living. Her best chance, she had decided, lay in seeking employment as a governess in one of the wealthy families. She liked teaching children, and hopefully there might be a library where she could extend her own learning as well as that of her charges. Whatever befell, there would be a blue sky overhead, and the warmth and color and fragrance and beauty that her heart craved.”

“As they came out from the shelter of the trees and the Great Meadows stretched before them, Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home?”

“This is the way I used to feel in Barbados, Kit thought with surprise. Light as air somehow. Here I’ve been working like a slave, much harder than I’ve ever worked in the onion fields, but I feel as though nothing mattered except just to be alive right at this moment.”

“Such frank talk about money embarrassed Kit. Her grandfather had seldom mentioned such a thing. She herself had rarely so much as held a coin in her hand, and for sixteen years she had never questioned the costly and beautiful things that surrounded her. In the last few months, to be sure, she had a terrifying glimpse of what it might mean to live without money, but it seemed shameful to speak of it.”

“By the end of that first day the word useful had taken on an alarming meaning. Work in that household never ceased, and it called for skill and patience, qualities Kit did not seem to possess.”

“Katherine Tyler, though art here accused that not having the fear of God before thine eyes thou hast had familiarity with Satan the grand enemy of God and man, and that by his institution and help thou hast in a preternatural way afflicted and done harm to the bodies and estates of sundry of His Majesty’s subjects, in the third year of His Majesty’s reign, for which by the law of God and the low of the Colony thou deservest to die.”

“But the dresses must serve another purpose now. Would they bring enough to pay her passage on a ship? Fine cloth like this was rare in Connecticut. In many families, she had learned, one dress such as these would be handed down through three generations as a cherished possession.”