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Indifferent to the punishment awaiting her, Janet strutted back to the Female Factory that December 20, 1838, where an auspicious surprise awaited her. Agnes, too, had returned to the valley to serve two months at the washtubs for being absent without leave. The two celebrated Hogmanay together as they brought in the new year in 1839. Their reunion was bittersweet because each would be sent her separate way. It would be nearly three years before their paths crossed again, although each returned to the Female Factory at different times. Sent out on four more country assignments, Agnes managed to run away from each. Her fate, however, took a turn for the better when, in 1840, Superintendent Hutchinson dispatched her to the most remote location he could find. While working in Oatlands, located in the middle of nowhere, the twenty-year-old met a dashing older man who captured her heart.

Her most recent spate of trouble involved insolence toward her master. The superintendent had run out of assignment options for the indomitable #253, who was about to turn twenty-one. She’d been sent to work all over Van Diemen’s Land, from Richmond fifteen miles north of Hobart Town to the remote Oatlands. Agnes always managed to run away from her master, no matter how distant or isolated the assignment, so a frustrated Hutchinson returned the untamable Scot to a place he could monitor. His wife, as matron, was required to inspect the nursery every day.

Because Agnes had experience as a governess for Mr. Harvey, she was well suited to work at Liverpool Street, although most prisoners who weren’t mothers considered it an undesirable assignment. Babies wailed day and night, the stench of diarrhea and vomit invaded every corner, and mothers fought for private space where there was none. The cramped little house was staffed primarily by convict mothers still nursing their infants. In addition to nursing their own child, they also cared for children separated from their mothers and housed in the nursery until transfer to the Queen’s Orphanage at age two or three. Agnes’s heavy responsibility inside Liverpool Street lightened considerably when she heard Janet’s Scottish brogue echo through the front entryway.

The two mates, fully blossomed into womanhood, still found unadulterated joy in recounting the girlish escapades they’d shared. Agnes had picked up a completely new repertoire of rebellious tunes about the regrets and the dreams of a convict maid:

I toil each day in greaf [sic] and pain

And sleepless through the night remain

My constant toils are unrepaid

And wretched is the Convict Maid

Oh could I but once more be free

I’d never again a captive be

But I would seek some honest trade

And never again be a Convict Maid9

Sitting inside the Liverpool Street nursery, Agnes excitedly confided in the loyal chum she considered a sister. They’d managed to survive the first five years of their transport sentence, suffering neither the illnesses nor alcoholism afflicting so many at Cascades. Picking up exactly where they’d left off, the two mates laughed, cursed, and cried through the stories and adventures they hadn’t been able to share. As Agnes took a turn cuddling William after her kitchen shift ended, they dared to dream about the promise of their freedom in 1843. Knowing instinctively that this might be their last time together, Agnes and Janet filled the present with recollections from their past. Together, they stayed out of trouble, or at least weren’t caught by Mr. Hutchinson.

All went smoothly at Liverpool Street save the death of one toddler in September 1841. The climate remained relatively mild after a freak snowstorm on September 13. By October, spring unfolded its arms in earnest as the days grew longer and temperatures climbed into the sixties. Janet, William, and Agnes spent the next few months together under Ludlow’s watchful eye. The two young women felt like girls again, and their exuberance lifted the spirits of everyone in the nursery. It was going to