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Back Lyddie
Chapters (36)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Books by Katherine Paterson
  4. Dedication
  5. 1
  6. 2
  7. 3
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. 8
  13. 9
  14. 10
  15. 11
  16. 12
  17. 13
  18. 14
  19. 15
  20. 16
  21. 17
  22. 18
  23. 19
  24. 20
  25. 21
  26. 22
  27. 23
  28. Acknowledgments
  29. Dear Reader
  30. Pre-reading Activities
  31. Week One (Chapters 1–6)
  32. Week Two (Chapters 7–12)
  33. Week Three (Chapters 13–18)
  34. Week Four (Chapters 19–23)
  35. Post-reading Activities
  36. What’s next onyour reading list?

In the end, she waited until the coachman had seen the horses and carriage taken care of and then let him walk her to his sister’s boardinghouse. “I’ve brought you a little chip of Vermont granite,” he explained to the plump, smiling woman who met them at the door. Then he added, “We’d best come in by the back. Run into a little muddy stretch on the way down.”

8

Number Five, Concord Corporation

At first she thought it was the bear, clanging the oatmeal pot against the furniture, but then the tiny attic came alive with girls. One struck a stick against a box, making the flash and odor of a tiny hell. And all this was just to light a candle that barely softened the predawn gloom of the attic. In the clatter of five girls dressing and squabbling over a single basin, Lyddie was forced fully awake and began to remember where she was.

Filthy as she had been, Mrs. Bedlow, the coachman’s sister, had kindly taken her in. The boardinghouse keeper hurriedly gave her brother a cup of tea and sent him on his way. Then she had her son, a boy about Charlie’s age, fill a tub of hot water in her own bedroom and ordered Lyddie to bathe. The mud-caked dress and shawl she carried away as soon as Lyddie shed them and plopped them directly in a pot of boiling water on the black iron cook stove.

And what a stove it was! Lyddie had only heard rumors of such modern wonders. When she came in from the boardinghouse keeper’s bedroom, her face scrubbed barn red, her warm, lazy body straining every seam of her one remaining dress, the first thing her eyes lit upon was the stove. She stared at it as though it were an exotic monster from the depths of the sea. If she could have chosen, Lyddie would have pulled a chair close to it and felt its wonderful warmth and studied its marvels, but Mrs. Bedlow urged her into the dining room, which was soon filled with a noisy army of almost thirty young women, still full of energy after their long day in the factory. Lyddie’s own head nearly settled into the plate of pork and beans, so that long before the others had finished, Mrs. Bedlow helped her up the four flights of stairs to the attic room, where she fell into bed hardly awake enough to mumble thanks for the woman’s kindness.