“One day we’ll get out of here”

“One day we’ll get out of here” captures both a child’s refusal to accept the workhouse as her permanent world and the promise Sunday Small makes to the friends she regards as family. Repeated in different forms as Sunday grows older, the expression joins consolation to intention: she imagines a safer life, pledges that Daisy Branning and Tommy Branning will share it, and later begins to plan how to make it possible.

Origin in shared hardship

The promise first takes shape amid the workhouse’s everyday punishments and privations. After Daisy tells Sunday that Miss Frost punished her for allowing Sunday to do her work, Sunday puts an arm around her friend and vows to protect her for as long as they remain there. Her assurance that they will eventually escape is not detached optimism: it is spoken with rage at the punishment and tenderness toward Daisy, who takes comfort from Sunday’s determination. The scene establishes the expression as something offered between them, a pledge meant to make present suffering less isolating.

That hope belongs to a place organized around control and separation. Residents are divided into sections for women, boys, girls, and men, and assigned labor according to the institution’s needs. Men and stronger boys pick oakum, crush bones delivered from a local slaughterhouse, or work in the gardens; women and girls sew uniforms, cook, clean, and labor in the laundry. Inmates seldom gather except on Sundays, when they are allowed to attend church. Sunday has seen how separation devastates families, so the imagined escape means more than leaving a building: it means the chance to remain together rather than submit to a system that keeps people apart.

A promise shaped around others

Sunday’s words to Tommy extend the imagined future beyond escape alone. When he speaks of enjoying carpentry but doubts whether he will ever get out, he looks at the grey walls and the wire fence. Sunday answers with a shared plan: they will work on a farm, care for animals, grow their own food, and never be hungry or hurt again. The promise makes room for Tommy’s interest in working with wood while offering a larger picture of freedom from hunger and violence. After he walks away with his shoulders sagging, Sunday silently renews her resolve to get them all away.

The farm is an imagined alternative to the workhouse’s restrictions, not an already secured destination. Its appeal lies in the ordinary life Sunday describes: work connected to animals and food, and the possibility of safety. Her vow also exposes the gap between what she can promise and what she can yet control. The children remain behind the fence, and the future depends on a departure they cannot simply choose at will; nevertheless, Sunday turns the imagined destination into a reason to keep going.

The same commitment reaches beyond Daisy and Tommy when Sunday learns that Cissie Burns has been taken to Hatter’s Hall. She has heard that newborn babies there may be taken from their mothers, and, despite Miss Beau’s caution that Cissie is strong enough to survive, Sunday insists that she, Daisy, and Tommy will escape and then get Cissie out. Once she learns that Cissie has in fact been sent away, Sunday repeats the promise to Daisy. The expression’s reach has widened: escape is no longer only a private hope for a small circle but a future in which Sunday intends to return for someone trapped elsewhere.

From reassurance to a plan

As Sunday approaches the age at which she can leave the workhouse, her promise acquires practical steps. She has already asked Miss Frost to look for suitable employment, yet leaving means being separated from Daisy and Tommy. Sunday tells Daisy that she will save every penny she earns until she can rent a place for them, then ask Verity Lockett to help get Daisy and Tommy out. The earlier image of a farm gives way to an immediate plan based on wages, savings, housing, and assistance. The underlying commitment remains the same, but it now has a sequence of actions attached to it.

The obstacles are personal as well as institutional. Tommy had been placed on a farm the previous year and returned to the workhouse within weeks, after the farmer called him worthless and workshy. Sunday believes that judgment is false and suspects Tommy did not try because he was fretting about leaving Daisy behind. His failed placement makes the promised farm future less simple than it once sounded; Sunday’s plan to save money and find a home together responds to the possibility that escape must preserve their bonds, not merely move one person out.

The phrase and its consequences

The workhouse’s conditions give Sunday’s promise material stakes. When Lavinia Huntley asks about food and punishment, Sunday describes dry grey bread, greasy porridge, and a cellar punishment room with only a bucket, no bed or blanket, and darkness, cold, and damp. She recalls spending three days there without food or drink, becoming so weak that Verity Lockett had to take her to the sickbay. She also reports that two little girls locked there were never seen again; Miss Frost said they had died of influenza, and Sunday cannot remember anyone saying they had a proper funeral. The account does not make every element of Sunday’s hope come true at once, but it shows why leaving the institution and protecting others carry such urgency.

Later, Verity Lockett reports that meals have improved and that fear and bullying have receded. A new matron has snapped Miss Frost’s split cane and thrown it away, and Verity proposes better bedding. These changes give the story a contrast to Sunday’s early conviction that no one there would stop hurting them: conditions can change, though the expression itself remains centered on getting the children out and keeping them together. Across its repetitions, the promise moves from comfort, to a shared vision, to a plan of saving and resettlement. Its significance lies in that movement: Sunday treats hope not as a substitute for action, but as the vow that keeps action directed toward a life beyond the workhouse.