Dinah Visits Lisbeth
- Decent day for Hetty and Arthur, awful day for Lisbeth Bede. Since morning, poor Lisbeth has been making arrangements for Thias's last rights. Oh yeah, and suffering from "occasional outbursts of wailing grief" (10.1). Girls like Hetty just want to have fun. Girls like Lisbeth—fun is the last thing they're having.
- Lisbeth has worked hard to prepare Thias for his funeral. But the rest of the house is a mess, "soiled with the tread of muddy shoes and untidy clothes and other objects out of place" (10.2). You can't grieve and run a home worthy of Martha Stewart.
- Lisbeth is sitting in her kitchen, missing Thias mightily, when Seth walks in. He offers her a cup of tea. But all Lisbeth can do is wail over her loss. Finally, she composes herself enough to go check on Adam. How is that coffin coming?
- Adam has been working away, working away, and has decided to catch a very few z's. He dreams that he is with Hetty only to open his eyes and find Lisbeth standing over him, wailing about death and loneliness and Adam's "poor feyther" (10.13). Talk about a rude awakening.
- Now, Adam is still plenty broken up about Thias. But he soldiers on; none of this anguished outburst stuff for him. He can't bear to listen to Lisbeth so he retreats upstairs and leaves her to wail away the livelong day.
- Lisbeth returns to the kitchen and returns to her crying. And she's just settling in for a good, long wail when a hand reaches out. But it isn't a ghost or a zombie or E.T. reaching out. It's Dinah Morris.
- Dinah is here to comfort Lisbeth. She's just the person for the job. After all, Dinah is "a workin' woman" like Lisbeth—not a pampered little thing like that Hetty (10.23). Though Lisbeth hasn't totally quieted down, she wants Dinah to stay with her.
- Seth is just as happy that Dinah is there. As he sees it, "her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief incessantly followed upon grief" (10.26). Dinah has known a lot of grief herself. As she tells Lisbeth, she never knew her parents, and now she ministers to the not-quite-happy working people of Snowfield.
- But Dinah is good for more than feeling Lisbeth's pain. She helps to tidy up around the house. The three of them—Dinah, Seth, and Lisbeth—finish up the night with a reading from "Adam's new Bible wi' th' picters in it," as Lisbeth calls it (10.39).
- Lisbeth has quieted down and made a new friend. So there's a silver lining to this gloomy stormcloud of a day.