Penny was left there for hours. At first she felt just fear, then came boredom. There was nothing in the room, a bed, a chair, and a bucket. After a couple of hours Penny moved the chair so that she was looking out of the window. It was a pleasant pastoral scene, and it calmed her for a while. But sheep and cows don't actually do much. Eat grass, and occasionally shit, that is about it. And this reminded her that she herself had not had a shit yet today. Fear had probably constipated her, which was probably a good thing, because all she had to shit in was the bucket, and it was bad enough sharing a room with a bucket of piss, it would be worse sharing the room with a smelly bucket of shit. Besides, she had no paper, what would she clean herself with afterwards?
Midday came and went. Penny had no watch, but she could see the sun out of the window, so she knew roughly what time of day it was. She had eaten no breakfast, and when lunchtime came around, no one brought her food. She should have felt hunger, but she didn't. Fear was again probably the cause. But by mid afternoon her stomach finally decided that fear was no substitute for calories, and hunger started to gnaw at her. For a while "wanting food" occupied her mind and chased away the boredom. But "being hungry", although unpleasant, is not interesting for long, and soon the boredom was back, tormenting her along with the fear and hunger she was feeling.
Later on, Penny was not sure if she should call it "late afternoon" or "early evening", the only interesting thing happened. The cows in the far field went away. Almost as one group the cows seemed to decide to walk to the far corner of the field. Penny thought she could see a gate in the corner, around which they were congregating, but it was a long way off and partially obscured by cows, so she could not be certain. Then a man appeared on the other side of the fence, the farmer, or a farm labourer, she assumed. He confirmed what she was looking at was indeed a gate, by opening it, and the cows began to slowly file out until the field was empty. Then the farmer/farm labourer closed the gate and followed them.
And that was it, the most interesting part of her day, seeing cows leave a field.
She sat there for a while wondering where they had gone. Off to market, she assumed, or to the slaughter house. Either way the farmer was no doubt about to realise his profits from the cattle. She was a little surprised that the cows had gone on their own accord. She assumed there had been some signal to them that she had not heard. A whistle, or a bell, or something. But this puzzled her, because she did not think you could train cows, and even if you could, it seemed pointless to spend time training them for just the one day when they got sold. Surely it would be more time effective just to chase them out of the field. Or use a sheep dog, or cow dog, or whatever they called them.
Finally, late in the evening the door opened and the butler came back in the room.
"The master and mistress are ready to instruct you now" he told her, then indicated that she should follow him. The fear she had been feeling all day began to get worse, but obediently she got up and let him lead her back down the corridor.
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