Summer came to an end, and Martha endured a hard winter, though the countryside was still beautiful in its way. The trees threw bare black shapes against white skies, and frost glistened on the hedgerows.
Only, things weren’t quite so picturesque inside the farmhouse. Uncle Abel and her cousins trampled filth across her clean floor every day, and festered by the fire in the evenings while Martha strained her eyes mending their clothing by candlelight. The hens went off lay and the cows were up to their hocks in mud.
‘You look as sorry for yourselves as I feel!’ Martha sympathised as she threw out a few scraps for the bedraggled hens.
But huddled under the thin blanket at night in her draughty attic, the more miserable she felt, the more Martha was determined to escape her dreary existence.
Still the only way she could think of was through Robert Dover’s Games and excelling in the running races to win a prize.
She loved the countryside, and her new friend Bess was a great comfort, but life at her uncle’s was too hard. She was older now. If she could just win enough prize money to get back to her home town and find a room and a job, she could support herself.
So, like any athlete, Martha started training. When Seth and Joshua sloped off to play cards at the inn, and Uncle Abel was snoozing away the afternoon, she took herself off to the furthest reaches of the farm.
Tucking her skirts
