It had been some time since Rose had invited Pearl for dinner. Life had been busy and stressful in between trying to keep a sulky Mr. Meijer and his witch sister happy, her sisters going missing, and all the trouble with Alice, and Rose hadn’t seen her friend since - much to her father’s satisfaction, probably. For after Pearl had left that evening, Rose's joy had soon been tempered when father had given her some painful ‘advice’. Father’s advice tended to take the form of a command, but Rose reasoned that she did not live under his roof anymore.
 
And so, on this bright and sunny afternoon on her day off, Rose set out from home with a basket in her hand, and a checked shawl tied around her head and body, to visit ‘an old school friend’. She stopped at Pearl’s modest dwelling – once again reflecting on the girl’s strange preferences, for Rose would put up with the most awful siblings to live in a mansion and not have to work – and knocked on the door.