Down in the kitchen, Lizzie bent to my boots then to her own. She found hats on a hook at the back of the pantry door and placed them on our heads. Then she took the walking stick she’d saved from the day before and put it in my hand.

We stood opposite each other, fully dressed, and Lizzie took me in. “You look like a wanderer,” she said, then she looked down at her own attire and turned round so I could admire the full effect. She chuckled, and the chuckle became a laugh, and the laugh overwhelmed her until her eyes streamed and her nose ran. She was right. I imagined the townsfolk of Oxford throwing bread ends and coppers into our hats. I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t stop a smile.

We walked after breakfast and every afternoon. I kept the stick, but needed it less as I began to feel stronger. I hadn’t known, exactly, that I’d been weak, but the walking and Lizzie’s porridge and Mrs. Lloyd’s cakes were reviving something in me. I slept less and noticed more.

Lizzie no longer blushed when Mr. Lloyd spoke to her. She met his eye and, if he asked, she gave him her opinion without looking down. After a week, Mrs. Lloyd began bringing her cakes in person. She would accompany Mr. Lloyd or Tommy in the afternoon and stay after they had set the fires. It became Lizzie’s habit to bake biscuits every morning and to lay the kitchen table for tea every afternoon. She laid it for four, though Mr. Lloyd always declined. “I’d only stop you ladies talking of what you will,” he said one day, backing out of the kitchen with his hat pressed against his belly, a slight bend to his back as if he were taking leave of the king.

As soon as he was gone, Lizzie would arrange a plate with biscuits and generous slices of Mrs. Lloyd’s cake. Then she would put the kettle on to boil and busy herself with tea leaves and pot. Mrs. Lloyd, already seated in the chair facing the stove, would start up the conversation wherever they had left off the day before. Their banter always went back and forth like a game of badminton, as if they’d known each other their entire lives. I felt I was seeing Lizzie as she might have been.