The house looked better since the furniture had been returned but was stifling hot after being shut up so long; Lyddie propped open the doors and windows and set to work, thinking that the poor house had suffered such a year of off-and-on neglect it must be anxious to get shed of her. She threw out some spoiled milk and the cucumbers she’d laid out to pickle; she turned and reshaped her cheeses, she cleaned a bloody smear off the window glass and carted the dead pigeon that lay below it into the woods; she picked the peas and cherries, weeded the garden, swept and sanded the floor, knocked down the cobwebs, milked the cow, put out her milk pans, ate a supper of the fresh fruit and a crust and dropped into bed like a felled pine. She slept to moonrise and woke, her mind working almost before her body wakened. She was, as Nathan had said, back at the start. Freeman was finished with her and back at Barnstable; Nathan had again cut her loose; Sam Cowett had…Sam Cowett had done nothing, but Lyddie could as little return to work for him as she could stay at Nathan’s or chase Freeman to Barnstable.
