“Enough,” Keffria warned her daughter, but to her surprise her husband laughed aloud.

“Come here, Malta. No, wipe your tears and come here. So,” he went on when his daughter had come close enough to be pulled onto his lap. He looked down into her face. “You think you are old enough to dress as a woman, now. Next you'll be wanting young men to come calling.”

“Papa, I'll be thirteen by then,” Malta began but he shushed her.

He looked over his daughter's head at his wife. “If you all go,” he began carefully, “would there be so much harm in letting her have a proper gown?”

“She's but a girl!” Keffria protested in dismay.

“Is she?” Kyle asked. His voice was warm with pride. “Look at your daughter, Keffria. If she is a little girl, she's a well-fleshed one. My mother always said, 'A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.' ” He stroked Malta's plaited hair and the girl beamed up at him. She gave her mother a pleading look.

Keffria tried to conceal her shock that her husband would side with her daughter against her. “Kyle. Malta. It is simply not seemly.”

“What is unseemly about it? What will it hurt? This year, next year, what difference does it make when she graduates to long skirts, so long as she wears them well and they look becoming on her?”

“She is only twelve,” Keffria said faintly.

“Nearly thirteen.” Malta sensed her advantage and pressed it. “Oh, please, Mama, say yes! Say I may go to the Offering and have a proper gown this year!”

“No.” Keffria was determined to stand her ground. “We shall only go if your grandmother does. Otherwise, it would be scandalous. On that I am firm.”

“But if we do go?” Malta wheedled. She turned to her father again. “Oh, Papa, say I may have a proper dress if Mama allows me to go to the Offering.”

Kyle gave his daughter a hug. “It seems a fair compromise,” he suggested to Keffria. To Malta he added, “You shall go to the ball only if your grandmother does. And no teasing or nagging about it. But if she goes, then so you shall, and you shall have a proper gown.”

“Oh, thank you, Papa,” Malta breathed as if he had granted her a lifelong wish.

Something so like anger that it dizzied her coursed through Keffria's blood. “And now, Malta, you may go. I wish to speak to your father. And as you believe you are old enough to dress like a woman, you shall show me you have the skills of one. Finish the embroidery that has been on your loom for three weeks now.”

“But that will take me all day!” Malta protested in anguish. “I wanted to call on Carissa, and see if she could go with me to Weaver Street, to look at cloth. . . .” Her voice dwindled off as she saw the look on her mother's face. Without another word, she turned and scampered from the room.

As soon as she was out of sight, her father let out a burst of laughter. There was nothing, Keffria thought, that he could have done that would have affronted her more. But when he caught sight of her face, instead of realizing his error, he but laughed the louder. “If you could see your face,” he managed at last. “So angry to have your daughter get around you! But what can I do about it? You know she has always been my pet. Besides. What harm, truly, can it do?”

“It can attract to her an attention that she has not been taught to deal with as of yet. Kyle, when a woman goes to the Harvest Offering in her first ball gown, it is more than an extra length of cloth to her skirts. It is an announcement that she is presented to Bingtown as a woman of her family. And that says she is of a courtable age, that her family will consider offers for her hand.”

“So?” Kyle demanded uncomfortably. “We do not have to say yes.”

“She will be invited to dance,” Keffria went on inexorably. “Not by the boys her age, with whom she has danced before. For they will still be seen as boys. She will be seen as a young woman. She will be dancing with men, both young and old. Not only is she still an indifferent dancer, but she has not been taught the skills of conversing with men, nor how to deal with attentions that are ... .unwanted. She may invite improper advances without being aware she is allowing them. Worse, a nervous smile or a silly giggle may make it seem she is encouraging them. I wish you had spoken to me before you had allowed her this.”

In the blink of an eye, Kyle went from discomfort to irritation. He stood abruptly, flinging his napkin to the table. “I see. Perhaps I should simply live aboard the ship, to avoid inconveniencing you while you determine the fate of our family! You seem to forget that Malta is my daughter as well as yours. If she is twelve and had not yet been taught dancing and manners, perhaps you should rebuke yourself for that! First you sent my son off to be a priest, now you behave as if I shall have no say in how my daughter is raised either.”