Opening
A single week reshapes everything for Ada Smith and her makeshift family. Susan Smith sinks into depression, the war presses closer, and Ada faces open cruelty that reawakens her deepest fears about Trauma, Abuse, and Healing. By week’s end, Ada discovers a daring new competence, a first real friend, and a life-altering spark of hope.
What Happens
Chapter 11: Three Things
Susan crashes into a severe depressive spell, staying in bed and telling Ada and Jamie Smith she has informed Lady Thorton she’s unfit to care for them. Ada quietly takes charge—boiling potatoes, managing the house, and bringing Susan tea sweetened exactly as she likes it. Susan is moved and ashamed in equal measure, admitting she first thought Ada lied about their shared last name. The next day, Susan surfaces. She says her sadness is about “Becky,” promises to try, and acknowledges someone needs to look after Ada. Their bond begins to shift, delicately, through mutual care.
An RAF airfield springs up almost overnight near Butter’s pasture, the drone of engines making the war feel immediate. Then comes Billy White’s family’s departure. At the station, Billy’s mother recoils from Ada, shielding her daughter and saying Ada should be in an asylum. The cruelty shatters Ada, who had believed Billy’s mother was kind, and confirms her terror that she is monstrous. Jamie explodes into a tantrum, begging to follow their friends back to London; Ada stands frozen, dreading the place he still calls home.
Chapter 12: The Iron Woman
Lady Thorton and her daughter stride into the station scene. Lady Thorton snaps at Jamie to stop, and he obeys instantly. She coolly praises how much healthier the children look. Susan sidesteps the compliment to ask about second-hand clothes.
The “iron-faced girl” introduces herself as Maggie and hisses that Ada’s pony story is a lie. Then the real shock lands: Lady Thorton explains Susan receives nineteen shillings a week to house the children. Susan had never realized it—she hadn’t listened when the scheme was explained. For Ada, the news is relief. Her food, her shoe, her presence aren’t draining Susan’s purse. Susan’s wry confession of inattention exposes how reluctantly she took the children in—while hinting that reluctance is fading.
Chapter 13: Learning to Ride
In secret, Ada teaches herself to ride Butter, chasing the sensation of speed and control she’s never known. She climbs a stone wall to mount, locates a bridle diagram in the stable storeroom, and works out the tack piece by piece. Butter tosses her repeatedly. She limps back on, again and again, refusing to quit. Each bruising fall only steadies her determination and feeds the first stirrings of Freedom and Imprisonment on her own terms and her fierce Courage and Resilience.
At night, Jamie whispers that at home he “knows the words for things.” Ada’s anger surges. She lists the hunger and isolation of their one-room life and orders him to stay with her because she keeps him safe. Jamie’s longing for the familiar collides with Ada’s terror of losing the freedom she is just beginning to claim.
Chapter 14: Freedom is in Peril
In town, propaganda posters spark new ideas. One reads, “Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory.” Ada points out it should say “our,” not “your.” Susan laughs, surprised and impressed. Another declares, “Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might,” and Ada asks what freedom means. Susan answers: the right to make decisions about yourself. The definition lands hard—naming what Ada has never been allowed.
They meet Stephen White guiding Colonel McPherson, a blind, exacting gentleman who demands proper introductions. Ada senses Stephen is miserable and that his mother lied about his choice to stay. The day expands Ada’s world: not just planes and posters, but the etiquette of introductions and the language for a life she wants.
Chapter 15: A New Friend and New Hope
A visiting teacher announces evacuee school—and declares Ada not on the list and not “educable.” Pressed to read, Ada cannot. The verdict cracks her. She cries for the first time. Susan erupts in Ada’s defense, calls her intelligent, and that night begins The Swiss Family Robinson aloud. She offers lessons the next day, but Ada, stung, retreats to Butter, her confidence in Identity and Self-Worth shaken.
Later, Ada sees Maggie thrown from a big hunter. Ada rushes in, calms and catches the horse, and—despite her foot—mounts to help the concussed, possibly collarbone-injured Maggie ride home. The girls talk about mothers who favor their brothers and find unexpected kinship. Then Maggie mentions her family’s stableman, Fred Grimes, once “fixed” a foal born with a clubfoot. The word fixed ignites Ada’s imagination: maybe her foot can be treated. Grimes drives Ada home, where triumph meets Susan’s fury—panic transmuted into parental anger.
Character Development
These chapters pivot the household from strangers sharing a roof to a fragile, forming family—even as old wounds flare and new fears rise.
- Ada Smith: Becomes quietly competent—cooking, managing, riding. Public humiliation (“uneducable”) reopens her deepest shame, yet she proves capable in crisis and claims authority over Jamie’s safety. Maggie’s “fixed foal” introduces the possibility of healing.
- Susan Smith: Reveals grief and depression (“Becky”) but recommits to caretaking. Her fierce defense of Ada and nightly reading mark the start of intentional parenting.
- Jamie Smith: Homesickness intensifies. His tantrum and “I know the words for things” encapsulate his pull toward the familiar, clashing with Ada’s need for safety and freedom.
- Maggie Thorton: First appears hard and disdainful; after her fall, she shows vulnerability and loneliness. She becomes Ada’s first peer friend and the source of crucial hope.
Themes & Symbols
Ada’s path through Trauma, Abuse, and Healing sharpens under public scorn and private comfort. Billy’s mother and the teacher echo Mam’s cruelty, but Susan’s protection and Ada’s self-taught riding offer counterweights—a new script in which Ada is cared for and capable. Meanwhile, learning she isn’t a financial burden eases a constant, corrosive fear.
Riding Butter embodies Freedom and Imprisonment: the pain of falling, the grit to remount, and the thrill of choosing. The airfield’s arrival literalizes how war accelerates change. The posters and Susan’s definition of freedom teach Ada the language to imagine a self beyond shame—an identity grounded not in what she cannot do, but in what she can. That arc collides with Identity and Self-Worth: the teacher tries to fix Ada’s value at zero; Ada’s bravery and skill insist otherwise.
Symbols:
- Butter: Private agency and earned confidence.
- The RAF airfield: War pressing ordinary life into new shapes.
- The “fixed” foal: Hope that a “permanent flaw” may not be permanent at all.
Key Quotes
“At home I know the words for things.” Jamie names the security of the familiar. The line crystallizes the siblings’ divide: his nostalgia for a place that starved them versus Ada’s terror of losing the fragile freedom she’s building.
“Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.” The poster reframes the war as a fight for personal agency. For Ada, who has never controlled her body or choices, it becomes a private call to defend her own emerging autonomy.
“Freedom is the right to make decisions about yourself.” Susan gives Ada a vocabulary for what she craves. The definition turns an abstract slogan into a concrete, daily practice—choosing to ride, to learn, to stay.
“Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory.” Ada’s correction—“our,” not “your”—reveals her growing critical mind and her hunger to belong. She resists being talked at and imagines herself as part of the “we.”
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters mark a hinge in the story: the transactional arrangement softens into a family scaffold. Susan’s defense of Ada in public and her commitment to reading at night formalize care, while Ada’s secret riding and rescue of Maggie prove she can shape her own life. Maggie’s mention of a “fixed” foal redirects Ada’s future; the goal is no longer only survival, but healing. Under the pressure of War as a Catalyst for Change, home becomes both refuge and training ground. The cliffhanger—Susan’s fury at Ada’s dangerous heroics—signals a new dynamic: worry, rules, and love braided into real parenting.