There was a merchant named Matthew King who, though very well off indeed, wanted one thing sorely: a child. He yearned for a child for five years before, one joyful day, it came out that his wife, Sarah, was with child. When the baby came, she was all he could have wished: she was a slip of a thing, with a puff of pale hair and very blue eyes. Her mother, who, like any proud mother, thought her daughter the most beautiful in all Creation, named her Rose.
Rose grew up adored; her father, though often busy, always had a sweet and a kind word for her, and he would tell the most marvelous stories of exotic places on calm nights spent around the fire. And Sarah taught Rosie, as they most often called her, her letters and her sums and bore Rosie’s many questions with patience. Though she learned cooking and cleaning, Rosie never was allowed to touch a needle. No one in the cozy house on Cook Street ever mentioned the reason, but reason there was: and a very terrible one at that.