“You’re looking much the rosier,” Brigid said. How pretty the girl was with her light brown hair and eyes clear blue as a bright February sky after snow. It was the smile, though, that transformed her into a real beauty. Lyddie smiled back. She did not envy other women their good looks. And even if she had been so inclined, she would never begrudge this bounty of nature to one so poor in everything else.

“We covered the machines as best we could while you were gone, me and Diana. Though”—she smiled apologetically—“you’ll see from your wage, the work was not near what it would be, had you been here.”

It was all they had time to say before Mr. Marsden stepped on his stool and pulled the cord that set the room to roaring and shaking. Lyddie jumped, then laughed. How quickly she’d forgotten the noise! Within minutes she had settled in and forgotten everything else—Mr. Marsden, her weakness, the farm, Charlie, even Rachel. It was good to be back with her beasts again. She belonged among them somehow.

By the breakfast bell she was almost too tired to eat. She would, if she could have chosen, sat out the break in the window alcove, but that would leave her alone on the floor. She glanced at Mr. Marsden and hurried toward the stairs. He didn’t speak to her. It was as if nothing had occurred between them, except that he never came over to her loom to pat and encourage her. Not once.

She managed to eat breakfast, or some of it. Rachel was stuffing herself like a regular factory girl, talking excitedly at the same time. She stopped only to look at Lyddie and say through her full mouth, “Eat, Lyddie. You got to eat and grow strong.”

So it was she got through breakfast and dinner, but by supper she could only manage a few bites of stew before she dragged herself up to bed. Fatigue was like a toothache in her bones. She would have cursed her weakness, had she the strength.

Each day, though, she was a little stronger. At first she could not feel it, no more than a body can feel itself grow taller. But by the end of the week, she found that she had eaten a full plate at supper and was lingering in the parlor with Rachel, who was watching, fascinated, as a phrenologist sought to sell his services to the girls.

“Please, Lyddie,” Rachel begged. “Let’s have our heads done.”

“I know about my head, Rachel. Why should I pay good money to find out it’s plain as sod and stubborn as a mule?”

“And such a skinflint a penny would freeze to your fist before you’d spend it,” the phrenologist snapped. “I give you that reading for free. Not that there’s hope you’d pay.”