 "Roller Skates" opens with the narrator remembering back to a special year in the 1890s, when young Lucinda Wyman arrives at the Misses Peters' home in New York City; the two ladies will care for her during the year of Lucinda's parents' trip to Italy.The narrator's diaries help her remember the details of 10-year-old Lucinda's "orphanage," as she calls it.Miss Peters, a teacher, is "a person of great understanding, no nonsense, and no interference."