Sunday escapes Yew Tree Farm after Bill’s assault attempt

Sunday Small’s escape from Yew Tree Farm follows Bill Barnes’s attempt to reach her attic room and the Barnes family’s response: rather than protect her, they blame her for resisting him. Sunday strikes Bill with a boot, rejects the suggestion that she should feel honored by his attention, and leaves the farm under cover of night. Her flight is a turning point from danger and isolation toward seeking help from Tom Branning, though it offers no immediate certainty about where she can go next.

Circumstances

The escape comes after Sunday has learned that Lady Lavinia Huntley may be her mother. A visit to Biddy Spooner’s home has made the possible loss of a family life newly painful, while the question of her birth offers only uncertain consolation. Sunday understands that her future remains precarious; she has not yet established that Lavinia is indeed her mother, and the knowledge does not itself give her a safe home. At Yew Tree Farm, where she is working for the Barnes family, she is still dependent on people who have power over her daily life.

The workhouse had shaped Sunday’s expectations of authority and punishment. At the Nuneaton Union Workhouse, residents were separated by sex and age, assigned labor, and rarely brought together except for Sunday church attendance. Sunday had endured harsh discipline, including three days in a cellar punishment room without food or drink, and had learned to suppress tears because Miss Frost took pleasure in seeing punished children cry. These experiences help explain why Sunday’s fear does not become passive compliance: she has learned the cost of dependence, but she also acts when immediate danger leaves no safe alternative.

The Confrontation

At night, Sunday hears someone climbing the ladder to her attic room and recognizes the likely danger. In the dark she searches for something she can use to defend herself, finds one of her old work boots, and crawls toward the opening. When Bill’s head appears at the top of the ladder, she brings the boot down on it. He loses his hold and falls back to the floor below. Sunday has repelled him, but the incident makes clear that the farm is not safe for her.

Selah Barnes comes to investigate and helps her son get up. Instead of acknowledging Sunday’s danger, she scolds her and argues that Bill’s interest should flatter a workhouse girl. She invokes the family’s expectation that Bill will inherit the farm, turning his position in the household into a claim of entitlement. Sunday answers that she is not illegitimate and would not want Bill even if he were to inherit a castle. Her refusal rejects both the insult attached to her uncertain birth and the idea that wealth could make an attempted assault acceptable. Though shaken by what has happened, she understands that Bill may try again.

Planning and Leaving the Farm

The following morning, the family treats Sunday as if she has wronged Bill. She carries on with her duties, but her response is not acquiescence: she decides to leave. While working in the laundry, she forms a plan to slip away before dawn, when the household is asleep. Her first thought is to seek help from Verity Lockett at the vicarage. Sunday believes Verity would help, although she does not know what would happen after that. The plan is driven by the immediate need to get beyond Bill’s reach, not by confidence that she already has a secure destination.

Sunday gathers her belongings into her largest bag and waits until she hears the household settle. At about one o’clock, she climbs down from the attic carrying the bag and crosses to the back door. The bolt is stiff, and opening it makes a sudden noise; she pauses, but no one comes. The dog leaves its kennel and then retreats when it recognizes her. Sunday continues on foot, and after she has put about a mile between herself and the farm, she stops briefly to rest. The escape begins in secrecy and uncertainty, but each step puts distance between her and the household that had excused Bill’s behavior.

Finding Tom and the Event’s Significance

The walk toward Coton is long, and Sunday is exhausted by the time the spire of Chilvers Coton church comes into view. She hesitates to involve Verity in her troubles and thinks instead of Tom Branning, now using the name Tom, who lives near the church. Because she knows many of the residents of cottages in Shepperton Street, she can work out which one he rents. In the early hours, likely around three or four, she knocks and waits, unsure whether she has found the right door.

Tom opens it and immediately recognizes that something is wrong. He brings her inside, lights the oil lamp, tends the fire, and seats her before asking what has happened. Sunday’s flight therefore ends not with a settled future but with a person she trusts receiving her at a moment of urgent need. The episode reverses the power dynamic at the farm: Bill’s attempt to use his position is met by Sunday’s physical resistance and deliberate departure, while Tom’s practical care gives her a first refuge. Her route from the attic to his cottage is an escape from an immediate threat, not yet a resolution of her uncertain family identity or her wider prospects.