to take care of her brothers, that surely she’d have a better chance of that with an education. And I asked if he could bear to think of her scrubbing clothes, or minding ten babies in a tiny room.
A year
, William said,
maybe ten months, and I’ll have the money for Mrs. Cook’s
, and I asked him if he remembered how long a year was, when he was a child, how long a month.
I’ve never asked you for a thing
, I said,
but I’m asking this now
, and in the end he agreed.
Hot irritating applications should be applied to the throat extending to the ears on each side. 2 or 3 layers of flannel saturated with a mixture of kerosene, collodium, turpentine etc. should suffice. Pork and mustard also answer the purpose very well. Also oil of turpentine 3 times per day in teaspoonful doses, mixed with spirits of ether.
I made Sadie a new dress from a skirt of mine that wasn’t too worn, and we bought a slate and the night before William brought home a handful of ribbons for her hair and left them on the table for her to find when she woke. She already knew her numbers and letters, could read some words and write all our names, but the first day she got her knuckles rapped for the shape of her
A
and I feared that William was right. But it never happened again, or if it did she didn’t say, and soon the teacher had her helping the slowest ones, as she was so far ahead. I missed her terribly, until I got used to it. Lunchtimes were short but when she came home in the afternoons she hugged us all, and then sat down at the table with Willie and showed him what she’d learned that day. Some days it wasn’t much;
I helped the little ones with their letters all day
, she’d say, or,
The bigger boys broke a bench and had to be whipped, and that took a long time
. There were days when she’d learned a new poem and she’d stand very still and recite it with her hands folded in front, like they were taught, and her eyes half closed. Sometimes they were poems that I knew and I was sorry again that my books had been sold, for I knew how she would have loved them. Her handwriting was beautifully clear and she liked to leave notes for her father to find, writing
Mr. William Heath, Esq
. with a great flourish, and drawing hearts in the corners.
What Willie liked best was the arithmetic Sadie taught him, and although his numbers were shaky in the writing he usually had the right answer, and often just by figuring in his head.
You must get that from your father
, I told him, and he was very like William with his serious air, his way of speaking only when something needed saying. Sometimes I thought I saw two faint lines between his eyebrows. He was like William too in caring to be clean, and I never had to remind him to wash when he camein from outside. The thing William hated most about the brickyard was the way the dust settled on his hair, on every bit of skin, the dirt always under his fingernails. When he began to work in the office he let his fingernails grow rather long, and I supposed it was because he could.
• • •
Charlie Ashe said his mother couldn’t leave her bed and when I opened the door of their room the smell was foul, and Annie barely able to open her eyes. I sent for the doctor and whether because of him or in spite of him, she got better. Sadie asked me,
Can women be doctors too?
and I said I thought there were a few.
That’s what I’ll be
, she said, and she wanted to practice on us, give us medicine, and I mixed up a little sugar water.
But medicine has to taste bad
, she said, and I said we would pretend, and she gave us spoonsful of sugar water and we all made terrible faces. Sometimes she bandaged Tom using bits from the rag bag, around his head and one arm and the other leg tied to splints. Tom who could rarely sit still, I was surprised, but he said she gave him sixpence.
Where did you get sixpence
, I said, and she said it was from William, for doing so well at school.
My Tom had lovely fair curls