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Winslow’s fulling mill, just rebuilt after the old one had mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night. She cut south along the creek, seeking shelter from the wind, continuing without thought until the ground became smooth under her feet and she realized she had wandered onto the worn depression of the Indian trail that circumvented the millpond. It had been years since Lyddie had walked so far; she looked ahead and saw a pair of huts covered in marsh grass with anemic streams of smoke rising from holes in the roofs; she began to turn around, but Eben Freeman’s words about the sad little nation came back to her. Why did some Indians like Sam Cowett move successfully into the mainstream of English village life and some stay here in poverty, among their brethren?
    Her curiosity took her forward. The millpond stretched frosted hard before her, and two young boys chipped at the edge. An old woman stepped out of the nearest wetu; as she lifted the flap Lyddie saw an English table and chairs inside. In the distance a small hive of women scraped a carcass that hung from a tree, another pair pounded a skin on the ground. Two small children chased a pig between the huts. She saw only one man, either very old or very crippled, hobbling into view with a basket of firewood slung over his shoulder.
    Lyddie turned around and slipped back through the trees.

     

    When Lyddie reached the house she found that Eben Freeman had just delivered some more papers and letters from Boston and now stood at the door under bombardment by Nathan’s favorite diatribe: Mr. Winslow’s usurping of the millstream. Lyddie greeted both men and went inside, where she found the Boston Gazette lying on the table. She picked it up and went to the fire. In a minute the lawyer joined her there.
    “You’re interested in the newspapers, Widow Berry?”
    “I’ve not the wit to comprehend all that I find in them. But I am interested, yes. I see your friend Otis named in it.”
    “He’s your friend as well, Widow Berry.”
    “Mine!”
    “He would say you’ve all the wit but not the education for the paper. He has a sister, Mercy, a rare creature; her father sent her with her brothers to their tutor. And James brought home his Harvard books to share with her. He’s now seen firsthand what an educated woman might accomplish and would spread the practice further.”
    “And what has Miss Otis accomplished?”
    “She’s Mrs. Warren now. And I believe she writes poems on the seasons.”
    “And what does her husband say when he’s served a poem for his dinner?”
    Freeman’s face did that thing she’d come to recognize as a smile. “He claps for her.”
    “Then there’s your rare creature.”
    “Please. Don’t mistake me. When I said Mrs. Warren was a rare creature, I referred not to any great rarity in her cleverness, but to—” He paused.
    “But to the fact she has three such men around her?”
    “I…Perhaps…well, yes. Indeed.”
    “And don’t mistake me, Mr. Freeman. I’m lost in admiration of them all: both the brother and the sister, and the father who sent his daughter to the tutor, as well as Mr. Warren, who claps for her.”
    “Ah! Now I must do something to add myself to your list. Perhaps if you made a poem and I clapped for you—”
    “We’d all be better served if I made your dinner and you clapped for Mr. Otis.”
    “If Mr. Otis does what he’s set out to do in his challenge of the Writs, we’ll all clap for him.”
    “Except, perhaps, the members of Parliament?”
    “Widow Berry, you underestimate your own wit. Perhaps you should make Mr. Otis’s speech for him.”
    The notion made Lyddie smile, and as the muscles around her mouth pulled back stiffly, she thought, Have I lost this, too, my talent for laughter? Or was it Edward who had found all the amusement in their life? Perhaps so, but if so, he would certainly have found it in this: his wife talking writs and Parliament with Ebenezer