Teaching Patience (Homespun) Read Free Page B

squeezed her shoulder.  “Right.  I’m glad you talked to him.”  
    “I hope he talks to Charlie and school is easier tomorrow.”   She sighed heavily.  “I’m not going to count on it, though.  The man is so persnickety.  I never know what he’ll say or do.”
    “If not, school is almost out for the term.  It’s already April.  Maybe you’ll learn some patience over the summer.”  
    “I’m certainly going to try.”   Patience’s mind was on Charlie and his father as she set the table.  She found herself thinking about the two of them a lot lately.

Chapter Three
     
    Patience walked to school ahead of her brothers and sisters every morning, because it was her job to start the fire in the stove that would keep them warm throughout the day.  It was April, and it was already warming nicely, but the temperature was still in the low fifties in the mornings, and the children would shiver through the morning without the fire.
    After taking care of the chore, she noticed she had forgotten to sweep on Friday afternoon.  It was usually the last thing she did before leaving for the day, but because she was so angry, it had completely slipped her mind.  By the time she’d finished sweeping, her pupils were arriving.
    They dropped their things in the cloak room and ran outside to take advantage of the playtime before she called them into school.  She had about ten minutes before it was time to start, so she sat down and wrote out the lesson for the older students on the board.  She was going to have them write essays about why education was important.  The idea had come to her Friday afternoon, and she wanted to see what her pupils would make of it.
    Soon, she called the class to order.  Charlie still fidgeted as much as usual, but he studied his lessons as well.  Patience was relieved.  She didn’t want to have to confront his father again.  Ever.  It was the first time in her three years of teaching she’d had to talk to a parent about their child’s behavior, and she hoped it was the last.
    It was midmorning when she noticed the entire schoolhouse go dark.  She went to the window and saw the storm clouds.  They were dark and ominous.  She sent Daniel and Amos, the son of Bess an old family friend, out to get as much firewood as they could. At twelve and eleven the two boys were the oldest in the school, because most parents kept their teenage boys home in the fall and spring so they could help on the farms. She’d never experience a blizzard bad enough the children couldn’t get home from school, but she kept emergency provisions in the school just in case.  It seemed like it was too late in the year to worry about a blizzard, but the clouds were telling her that was an erroneous assumption.
    She hurried around the room lighting the lanterns she usually only used on rainy days.  The light from the windows was generally sufficient for them to study by.   She didn’t mention the storm, and hoped the children would take a while to realize what she was doing.  A blizzard would make them fearful for their families, and it would make the day much harder to get through.
    The boys made several trips to and from the woodpile in front of the schoolhouse.  The last time they came inside, they were covered with snow and shivering from head to toe.  “Go stand in front of the fire and warm yourselves.”
    Once the two boys were warm and back in their seats, she told Grace to monitor the other students for a bit while she went outside to take care of something.  She grabbed the piece of rope she kept in the cloak room and tied one end to the door of the schoolhouse and carried the other out to the outhouse, tying it off there.  Now the children would be able to follow the rope to and from the outhouse when they needed to go.  There was no telling how long they’d be stranded there, and she wanted to be prepared.
    She would have the children leave the building two at a time, never letting