Through the window of her mother's shop Zilphia watches her former schoolmates "fall into inevitable pairs" - i.e. begin dating - and notes that some of them end up at "the minister or the church," i.e. getting married (374). She may be thinking of an actual "minister" or using the term figuratively.
This entry represents the "passers" - i.e. people passing by - in "three different parts of town" whom Mrs. Gant questions about the families of the girls that Zilphia told her she "would like to visit" (373).
The "them" in the phrase "made them return her money" is the story's only reference to the people who own or work in the store where Mrs. Gant bought and then brought back a miniature cook stove (373).
"The doctor" - a phrase which suggests the town has only one doctor - appears three times in the story: twice to treat Zilphia, and once to treat her mother (372, 375, 380). On his first visit he tells Mrs. Gant that Zilphia "would have to have companionship, to play with children of her own age and out-of-doors" (372).
These farmers from the countryside around Jefferson tether their teams in the lot beside the Gants' shop when they come into town "on market days" (371). While "hitching or unhitching" their horses and mules, they see Zilphia's "small wan face" behind the bars on the window of her room; they have "heard about" what Mrs. Gant did to her husband, and they discuss the sickly child without any sign of compassion (371).
Presumably this county employee also serves as a truant officer, since it is he who "forces Mrs. Gant to let Zilphia go to school" when the girl is almost ten (371).
This is the "daughter" who is born to the "girl whom [Zilphia] used to visit" when a teenager (374); the narrative notes that at least some of the dresses this child wears were made by Zilphia.
The one girl whom Zilphia has permission to visit and play with after school is not named or described, but after the two girls have grown up the narrative mentions her marriage (Zilphia herself makes the bride's "white gown," 374), and, after another four years, the birth of her first child, a daughter (for whom Zilphia makes dresses).
Miss Zilphia's grotesque childhood is set against the normal lives of other Jefferson children, "all the boys and girls" who go to school (372) and who run, for example, "with random shouts back and forth at recess" (371). As they grow up, these children "fall into inevitable pairs," courting and marrying (374). The child with whom Zilphia is allowed for a while to play has her own entry in the database.
One of Zilphia's schoolmates. Sometime after she turns thirteen, she and this boy lie together for "a month" beneath a blanket in the woods, "in the mutual, dreamlike mesmeric throes of puberty," "rigid, side by side," and apparently without any intimate contact (374). He disappears from the story after Zilphia's mother discovers them together.
