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With the men upstairs, Mrs. Hale says “testily” that she’d be angry if men had been judging her housekeeping. With “timid acquiescence,” Mrs. Peters defends the men for doing their jobs, but Mrs. Hale empathizes with Minnie Wright. Both were called away from interrupted tasks, and the men are “mean” for criticizing something neither woman could control. She wonders what interrupted Minnie’s work and fights the urge to finish tasks Minnie left undone. She knows that Mrs. Peters is watching her and doesn’t want to arouse suspicion about what happened. She cleans the single jar of fruit that didn’t freeze as she recalls the hot summer work of preserving fruit. Looking at the broken rocker, she imagines Minnie sitting there nervously, till Mrs. Peters asks for help gathering clothes.
As they fold the clothes, Mrs. Hale notes how worn they are. As a young woman, Minnie was “lively” and wore pretty clothing, but now she has only “shabby” clothes. No wonder, Mrs. Hale thinks, that she no longer comes to town or sings in the choir. She considers whether Mrs. Peters feels sympathy for Minnie and decides she might, “in her nervous little way.” Mrs. Hale asks, “Do you think she—did it?” Mrs. Hale does not think so, but Mrs. Peters shares something her husband told her. At the trial, Mr. Henderson plans to mock Minnie for saying she slept while someone strangled her husband. Mrs. Hale notes that John Wright didn’t wake up, either. Mrs. Peters wonders why the killer didn’t use Wright’s gun instead.
The sheriff has told his wife that the attorney needs a motive, a clue that suggests “anger—or sudden feeling.” Mrs. Hale realizes that the men want to “turn her own house against her.” Yet she realizes that Wright was a stingy man who made it hard for Minnie to keep house well. The stove, for example, is in such bad shape that she would hate to bake daily bread in it. As she wishes she had known what Minnie was up against, she hears Mrs. Peters say that a discouraged person “loses heart.”
They notice that Minnie was working on quilt pieces and wonder whether she planned to quilt or knot them together. The men overhear the conversation as they enter the kitchen. They laugh at “the ways of women” and leave to check the barn. Mrs. Hale objects to being mocked, but Mrs. Peters defends the men, who have “awful important things” to consider.
Mrs. Hale notices that Minnie’s usually even stitching is erratic on a single piece. The women lock eyes, then pull away. Mrs. Hale sits down to take out the bad stitches. When Mrs. Peters objects that they shouldn’t touch anything, Mrs. Hale keeps working, replacing the messy stitches with neat ones. Mrs. Peters says that Minnie must have been nervous about something to have sewed so badly, but Mrs. Hale blames the stitches on Minnie’s tired eyes. Mrs. Peters goes to look for paper in which to wrap the clothes.
