The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier

steady, which was reflected in her even stitching. But it seemed that silence did not have that effect on everyone’s sewing.
    Honor did not try to teach Abigail, to adjust the way she held her needle or advise her to sit up straight and to use a thimble so she wouldn’t prick her fingers and get blood on the white cloth, or show her how to do a double back stitch instead of making a knot in the thread. It was enough to be able to sit with her and work side by side in a familiar rhythm Honor had known her whole life.
    “Wait till the others see thy stitching,” Abigail remarked. “They’ll be asking thee to quilt for them at the next frolic.”
    * * *
    Slowly Honor began to meet other Faithwell residents. Passersby came up to be introduced when they were sitting on the front porch. Abigail took her to the farm west of town that sold milk and cheese, and she met the farmers as well as a few other customers. On the Fifth Day it was raining so hard Abigail declared she would not attend Meeting in such weather. So it was not until the First Day Meeting that Honor met the whole community.
    Faithwell Meeting House consisted of a bright, square room with bare whitewashed walls and windows on all sides. It was about the size of Bridport’s, but for half the number of Members, so it did not have the crowded feel Honor knew from home. Benches on four sides faced inward, one of them reserved for Elders—the senior Members whom the community looked to for guidance. An unlit stove sat in the center, its pipe zigzagging up to a hole in the roof.
    Honor had been looking forward to Meeting, for she had not attended one since Philadelphia and craved the sense of peace it normally brought. It always took some time for a Meeting to grow still and quiet, like a room where dust has been stirred up and must settle. People shifted in their seats to find comfortable positions, rustled and coughed, their physical restlessness reflecting their minds, still active with daily concerns. One by one, though, they set aside thoughts about business, or crops, or meals, or grievances, to focus on the Inner Light they knew to be the manifestation of God within. Though a Meeting started out quiet, the quality of the silence gradually changed so that there came a moment when the air itself seemed to gather and thicken. Though there was no outer sign of it, it became clear that collectively the Meeting was beginning to concentrate on something much deeper and more powerful. It was then that Honor sank down inside herself. When she found the place she sought, she could remain there for a long time, and see it too in the open faces of surrounding Friends.
    Occasionally Friends felt moved to speak and give testimony, as if God were using them as a medium. They spoke thoughtfully, sometimes quoting passages from the Bible. Though anyone could speak if they wished to, Elders spoke more often than others. Honor had never spoken: the feeling she reached at Meeting was not something she could describe in words. Trying to would ruin it.
    Yet, though Faithwell Meeting was similar in form to English Meetings, Honor found as she sat, still and silent, that she could not drain her mind. The space was different, the light and the air and the smell, and the many new faces. Then, too, there were the crickets and grasshoppers, and something Abigail called katydids, all noisier and more persistent than any insects Honor had heard in England. Their buzzing and droning and whining produced a wall of sound difficult to ignore.
    All of these things were distractions. But Honor had been to unfamiliar Meetings before, in Exeter and Dorchester and Bristol, and she had managed to experience the same silence as at Bridport. At Faithwell, however, she was conscious of being in a place she would be expected to consider home, and because of that, she could not relax and let her mind go. When the silence began to deepen, Honor could not connect to that communal gathering and follow