Lyddie

Lyddie decides that she will leave the tavern immediately. Triphena insists on giving Lyddie a pair of her boots, a sack full of food for her travels, and a purse with five dollars in it. Tired from her walk back from the farm and soaked by a spring rainstorm, Lyddie stops for the night at an inn. She exchanges a few days’ work for room and board while she awaits the stagecoach that will take her to Lowell, Massachusetts. The innkeeper is impressed with her work and implores Lyddie to stay on, but she is determined. Lyddie pays three dollars for a ride in the coach, including one night at an inn and is crammed into the coach the next day with five other passengers. Lyddie feels the judgment attached to the glances the other passengers cast her way, and she longs to be out of the stuffy confines of the coach, wishing she had saved her money and walked.

Not far from Lowell, the stagecoach becomes lodged in the mud, and the driver orders all the passengers out to push it while he urges the horses forward. The well-dressed male passengers are as disgruntled with their task as they are ineffectual at executing it, and Lyddie grows frustrated watching them struggle with the coach. With an exasperated sigh, she sticks a flat stone under one of the wheels and gets behind the coach to push beside the men. The wheels catch and make purchase, and the coach finally rolls forward. Lyddie has had enough of the company inside the coach and asks if she may ride up front with the driver. The driver has a newfound respect for her, and during their ride he asks if she is going to work in a factory. When she says yes, explaining about the farm, he asks if there isn’t anyone at home who can help with the farm and the property. When she confirms that she is on her own, he offers to introduce her to his sister, who runs one of the factory boardinghouses in Lowell. When they enter the city, Lyddie is astonished by the size, sounds, and activity of the city, having never been anywhere so developed or populated before. At Number Five, Concord Corporation, Lyddie is greeted by the coachman’s sister, Mrs. Bedlow.

Lyddie arrives in time to bathe and join the girls of Number Five for dinner as they assemble at the two long tables, filling the room with their energy and lively chatter. She spends the night in an attic room with five other girls. Mrs. Bedlow promises to bring Lyddie to the offices of Concord Corporation to secure a position but informs her that first she must purchase new, suitable clothes. Lyddie is concerned because she only has two dollars remaining of Triphena’s money, but Mrs. Bedlow insists on giving her another dollar for the dress, now ruined, that Lyddie was wearing when she helped wrest her brother’s coach out of the mud. At breakfast on her first morning in Lowell, Lyddie meets Betsy, Amelia, and Prudence, who take her shopping for new clothes. The mill girls will have several days’ rest from work because the Merrimack River, which propels the machines on which they work, has risen too high for the wheel to turn. Amelia convinces Mrs. Bedlow to allow Lyddie to move into their four-person room, instead of sharing the six-person attic room. As her three new roommates educate her on the details of mill life, Lyddie is surprised to learn that along with the expectation that she maintain a certain appearance, there are additional moral standards that Concord Corporation employees must uphold, including attending church.

When Mrs. Bedlow escorts Lyddie to the mill to meet the employment agent, Mr. Graves, Lyddie is finally able to appraise the surroundings in which she will be working. She is astonished by the enormity of each space, from the counting room to the courtyard, offices, storerooms, machine shop, and repair shop, as well as the six-story mill itself. The men working in the mill offices are brusque and dismissive, but Lyddie leaves having signed a one-year employment contract, furnished with a copy of the “Regulations for the Boarding Houses of the Concord Corporation.” Lyddie is vaccinated against smallpox according to the mill’s requirements, but she must wait another two weeks for the river to recede before the announcement is made that the mill will resume production. Mrs. Bedlow brings Lyddie to the mill for her first day after the lunchtime bell, and Lyddie is overwhelmed as she is swept into the crowd of girls reporting to work amidst the bustle and noise of the factory come back to life.

Entering the weaving room, Lyddie is astonished by the commotion created by the rows and rows of weaving machines as they operate unceasingly, all the mechanisms and components driving forward the production of yards upon yards of cloth. She is overwhelmed by the cacophony of sound, having never been exposed to an environment so loud in her life. Mr. Marsden, the floor overseer, begins giving her instructions, but Lyddie cannot hear a word that he says. She cannot fathom how all the girls operating the looms maintain their efficiency and composure in the midst of such chaos. An experienced weaver sweeps in, introducing herself as Diana and offering to help Lyddie become acclimated to her new role. Diana shows Lyddie how to insert a bobbin, a spool wound with thread, into the shuttle, the wooden canoe-shaped instrument that is fired back and forth across the threads mounted in the loom, creating each new row of weft thread. Placing her mouth on the end of the shuttle, Diana breathes in to pull the thread through, telling Lyddie this trick is called “the kiss of death” (64). Diana teaches Lyddie how to repair a broken thread with a weaver’s knot as quickly as possible, as weavers are not paid for ruined yardage. Lyddie learns that bobbins need to be replaced approximately every five minutes as they run out of thread; she learns how to hang the temple hooks that ensure new rows of threads will be packed tightly by the machine and how dangerous it can be when the shuttle is not placed correctly at the end of the “race,” the track where it needs to be settled before the machine is turned on. Lyddie and Diana find themselves on the subject of boardinghouse regulations, and Lyddie admits that her reading skills are not at a level that facilitates their understanding. Diana invites Lyddie to come to her boardinghouse, Number Three, that evening.

When Amelia, Betsy, and Prudence learn that Lyddie is going to visit Diana, they vehemently discourage Lyddie from befriending her. They believe Diana to be trouble because of her activism in the local labor association. Lyddie dismisses their concerns. Instead of going over the regulations, when Diana learns that Lyddie has not written to her family since coming to Lowell, she provides her the paper and postage for letters to Charlie and her mother.

On her first full day in the weaving room, under Diana’s watchful eye, Lyddie makes a concerted effort but struggles to focus amid all the noise and the encroaching pain in her feet from standing in her new, stiff pair of boots. Further, Lyddie begins to be bothered by the air quality. Amid the oppressive humidity float millions of tiny particles of cast-off lint and thread sloughed off in the weaving process. Lyddie goes to a window hoping to draw in a few breaths of fresh air, only to find that the windows are nailed shut. Diana hurries over, reminding her that Mr. Marsden is watching and that she needs to prioritize her productivity. She returns with the other girls to Mrs. Bedlow’s boardinghouse for the breakfast and lunch recesses and again at the end of the workday for dinner. Sitting at the dining tables before heaps of food, surrounded by lively banter, Lyddie recalls the peaceful atmosphere of the Cutler’s Tavern kitchen and her quiet conversations with Triphena.

Exhausted, Lyddie tucks herself into bed early, and Betsy, who is always reading a novel in her spare time, offers to read aloud to Lyddie. As she listens, the story of Oliver Twist unfolds, Betsy beginning where she left off as Oliver asks the poorhouse overseer for more to eat. Betsy mentions that the author, Charles Dickens, once visited their factory, but Lyddie asks that she continue reading, anxious to hear what will become of Oliver. She is reminded of Charlie and the struggles she and her siblings experienced with food scarcity on the farm.