Tom's Midnight Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child abuse, bullying, and gender discrimination.

Hatty complains that her cousins never let her play outlaws with bows and arrows. Tom instructs Hatty how to make a bow, and she asks Abel, the gardener, to string it for her. Abel warns Hatty not to be led astray by whoever helped her make the bow. When Hatty accidentally shoots an arrow through the greenhouse, Abel quickly replaces the broken pane before her aunt Grace notices.

Hatty and Tom crawl through the gap in the hedge to a meadow by the river. She talks wistfully about how the river flows to places she has never been, like Castleford, Ely, and eventually the sea. Hatty is shocked when Tom suggests that she could paddle in the river or row downstream in a boat. She explains that she is not supposed to go as far as the river, as her aunt does not like her muddying her clothes. 

Suddenly, Hatty is worried and insists that they return to the garden. A gaggle of geese watches as Hatty and Tom crawl back through the hedge.