Judith Wood and Kit are the same age but from very different backgrounds.  Judith is beautiful but has been brought up by her strict Puritan father and mother so to acknowledge that beauty is sinful.  When Kit arrives from Barbados with 7 trunks of clothes and accessories she stirrs up a jealousy in Judith.  This jealousy is compounded with anger because she has to share her bed with Kit.  Judith is critical of Judith because she doesn't know what it is like to do hard work and she thinks that it would have been better if Kit had been a boy.  Judith tells her mother, "if we had to have a orphaned cousin, why couldn't she have been a boy?"

Judith's jealousy is increased when William Ashby loses his interest in her and becomes infatuated with Kit.  In the end they all work out their problems, but it is a tenuous relationship at best.