Page 36 of The School Mistress (Emerson Pass Historicals 1)

“That’s all right,” I said. “So am I.”

The last was nine-year-old Louisa Kellam. Dressed in a thin, frayed dress with holes in the toes of her boots, she was so shy she couldn’t look at me when I asked her for her name and age. She could pick out a few words from the primary reader but didn’t know any of her numbers.

“Have you ever been to school before?” I asked.

“No, miss. When we lived in Nebraska, Pa says he ain’t got time to take me to school and that he needed my help at home.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s dead,” she said, without emotion.

“How did you get here this morning?” I asked.

“I walked. Our house is just a ways down the road.”

I remembered a shack I’d spotted in the woods on the way into town. I had a feeling she lived there. How could she walk all that way in the snow? She’d freeze to death in that thin coat and those boots with the holes in the toes.

“I really, really want to go to school and Pa don’t like it. But if I sneak out before he wakes up, I figure he can’t stop me.”

Before he woke up? I knew what that meant. Her pa must be a frequent patron at the saloon.

“Do you think your pa would mind if I came out to talk with him about why it’s important you be here?”

She shook her head so violently I thought it might fall off her skinny neck. “No, please don’t do that.”

“Won’t he notice when you’re not there all day?”

“He sleeps most of the day. I don’t figure he’ll know.”

“All right, then.” I’d have to sort through this later. “You can go back to your seat.”

I looked down at my class roster. My first class. I hoped I would do them justice.

Martha Johnson, 16

Elsa Johnson, 14

Josephine Barnes, 13

Poppy Depaul, 13

Isak Olofsson, 11

Alma Cassidy, 10

Theo Barnes, 9

Flynn Barnes, 9

Louisa Kellam, 9

Viktor Olofsson, 9

Shannon Cassidy, 8

Nora Cassidy, 6

Cymbeline Barnes, 6