A Break With Charity Chapter 3 Summary

Four Creatures

  • It's time for Susanna to head home, but there's one problem: she still has all the goods she was supposed to deliver for the poor. Uh oh, mama is not going to be a happy camper.
  • Susanna decides she'll just hide the goods until tomorrow and lie to her parents in the meantime. But luckily for this scheming gal, that's not necessary—she bumps into four creatures who lend her a hand.
  • Creature (1): A pig. Susanna gives this little oinker some dried corn.
  • Creature (2): John Dorich. Susanna went to school with this sixteen-year-old bloke way back when. Now the fellow is an apprentice at the wharf… and wharf means ships… which means, you guessed it, William. So Susanna trades some tobacco for John's gossip. Turns out three ships are arriving in Boston from Barbados. And you just know Susanna is hoping big bro William is on one of those ships.
  • Creatures (3) and (4): Sarah Good and Dorcas Good. Sarah doesn't have the best rep around town, and Susanna calls her "the town hag" (3.40) and "tramp" (3.41), which means Sarah is pretty much homeless and not well-respected around town at all. Poor gal. Susanna says that the Puritans love cleanliness and hard work, so since Sarah Good is a beggar, the Puritans in Salem aren't her biggest fans.
  • Now here's some extra sad news: Sarah had a bunch of kids, but the town magistrates took the kids away from her. The only one left is little Dorcas, Sarah's five-year-old daughter. Oh, and Sarah is preggo again. Yep, this lady has it rough.
  • But at least Susanna has a way to help out: she gives all her extra goods to Sarah. She figures that Sarah is poor, so she's basically following her mother's advice. Plus, it's the right thing to do.