What happens on the walk home from the printer

You can
find the answer to your question about what happens on the walk home from the printer in Chapter
8 of Fever, which opens on September 2nd, 1793. The weather is oppressively
hot, mosquitoes are rampant, and the church bells toll incessantly for the dead. In the public
square, a cannon is fired to purify the air.

Eliza goes off to a meeting at
the Free African Society concerning the fever outbreak as Grandfather stops by to pick up Mattie
for a visit to Mr. Brown's print shop.

At the print shop, a broadsheet with
the mayors orders regarding the outbreak is being printed. One of the orders is that the
churches must stop ringing the bells every time someone dies. Mr. Carris, Mr. Brown, and
Grandfather share news about the fever outbreak: Politicians and rich families are fleeing the
pestilence and Ricketts Circus building is being taken over to quarantine the sick. Grandfather
insists that public reaction to the illness is exaggerated. He has no intention of leaving for
the countryside: I didnt run from the redcoats, and I wont run from a dockside
miasma.

On the walk home from the printers shop, Mattie hopes for the first
frost of the season, as Frost always kills fever. As they approach their own shop, Grandfather
and Mattie are surprised by a limping man dressed in dark rags, pushing a wheelbarrow, who
unceremoniously dumps a body into the street. Much to their shock, they realize that it is
Matties mother.