As a serving girl, Grace tells the doctor, she met Mary Whitney, then her roommate and her only friend. Mary taught Grace how to act the role of a servant, and joked with her about the family's upper class airs, when nobody else was listening. Giving motherly advice on how to stay out of trouble with young men, Mary told her "if there is a ring, there had better be a parson" (p. 165). Mary herself became pregnant – presumably by a son of the family – and died from a botched abortion. Grace had helped Mary get home and into bed, but awoke the next morning to find Mary dead. Grace was troubled afterwards by the idea that she should have opened the window during the night when Mary died, to let her soul out (p. 178).