His shirt, wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more than usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of a drawer.

This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the same shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night, and he felt justified in the extravagance.
In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most dangerous fashion.

All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all.

All day long in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of her musing.

"I hate t' live.