It had been two weeks since she fell ill, and Dr. Morris still refused to let her return to work. Her mind roared protest, but her legs could hardly carry her to the privy. Her body had never betrayed her before. She despised its weakness, and every day she heard the first bell and ordered herself up and dressed, but she would only be up a few minutes, not even through washing herself at the basin, before the sweat broke out on her forehead from the effort, and she was obliged to let Rachel help her back to bed.

There was too much time in bed. She slept and slept and still there were hours awake to worry when her mind skimple-skombled back on itself like threads in a snarled loom. Why hadn’t Charlie written? She should have heard from him long ago. Perhaps her letter had been lost. That was it. She sat straight up.

“Better rest, Lyddie.” Rachel was there as always. “The doctor said.”

“Get me some paper and my pen and ink from the box there—the little one on top of the bandbox. I must write Charlie again.”

Rachel obeyed, but even as she handed Lyddie the writing materials, she protested. “You ain’t s’posed to worry, Lyddie. Doctor said.”

Lyddie put her hand on Rachel’s head. Her hair was soft as goose down. “It’s all right, Rachie. I’m much better, ey? Nearly all well now.”

Rachel’s brow furrowed, but her eyes were clear, not the dead, blank eyes of her arrival. Lyddie stroked her hair. “I had me such a good nurse. I couldn’t have believed it.”

Rachel smiled and nodded at the writing box. “Tell Charlie,” she said.

“I’ll be sure to,” Lyddie said. “He’ll be monstrous proud.”

By the next week she was feeling truly ready to go back to work and remembering with every breath her last act at the factory. Merciful heavens. There was probably no work to go back to. Had she really? Had she truly stomped on Mr. Marsden’s foot with her boot heel? She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. She sent a note to Brigid—most of the girls were wary of speaking to Diana under Mr. Marsden’s nose—asking her and Diana to stop over after supper.

That evening both Diana and Brigid came as she hoped. Brigid brought more soup from her now fully recovered mother and a half bottle of Dr. Rush’s Infallible Health Pills. “Me mother swears by them,” she said, blushing.

Diana handed Lyddie a paperbound book—American Notes for General Circulation—by Mr. Charles Dickens. “Since you’re such an admirer of the gentleman, I thought you might like to see what he wrote about factory life in Lowell,” she said. “I suppose he was comparing us to the satanic mills of England—anyhow, it’s a bit romantical, as they say.”