She told the Winslows that above all else she wanted a place where she could be quiet and study and write. Being Quakers, they thought of the little village of Amesbury, Massachusetts, tucked away tranquilly where the Powwow River flows into the lower Merrimack. There the Quaker Whittier lived, and life flowed along as quietly as the great river.

The friends to whom the Winslows sent Mrs. Patterson could not take her in, but she made her way to another house renowned for its hospitality. It was a large, fifteen-room Georgian house at the foot of Merrimac Street near the river, and it was owned by a retired sea captain, Nathaniel Webster, who was now superintendent of cotton mills in Manchester, New Hampshire. Captain Webster was away from home except for every other Sunday, and his wife—a delightful old spiritualist generally known as Mother Webster—kept the house filled with fellow spiritualists, invalids, and unfortunates of one kind or another. She herself was both a “drawing medium” and a “healing medium,” in the latter capacity prescribing remedies for many of her waifs and strays.

When Mrs. Patterson announced that she had felt led to apply there for lodging, Mother Webster put her own construction on the words, threw up her hands, and said: “Glory to God! Come right in!”⁹¹ And there for the next ten months Mrs. Patterson was to live, through the golden days of autumn, the snows of winter, and the lilac-filled New England spring. She was given a large, sunny room with a fireplace, and Mrs. Webster’s special “spiritual” desk at which to write, but she had to sit through some of her hostess’s seances and a good deal of spiritualistic chit-chat as the price for her much-needed peace.

One young girl who was deeply attached to “Captain Nat” and “ ‘Grandma’ Webster,” as she called them, later recalled Mrs. Patterson as she was at that time—or Mrs. Glover, as she was now beginning to call herself again: “I have always remembered her eyes, just so full of love and tenderness. I often saw her and Mrs Webster when they went to walk the first of the evening.”⁹² They would cross a little bridge over the Powwow, she wrote, and stand on the bank of the Merrimack, looking at the sunset together. Local gossip had it that Mrs. Glover would one day walk on the water.