These Happy Golden Years Read Free Page A

arithmetic, and grammar recitations in the forenoon, and, in the afternoon, reading again, history, writing, and spelling. There were three classes in spelling, for Ruby and Tommy were far apart in the spelling book.
    After fifteen minutes, she rapped on the window to call the pupils in. Then until noon she heard and patiently corrected their reading aloud.
    The noon hour dragged slowly. Alone at her table, Laura ate her bread and butter, while the others gathered around the stove, talking and joking while they ate from their dinner pails. Then the boys ran races in the snow outdoors, while Martha and Ruby watched them from the window and Laura still sat at her table. She was a teacher now, and must act like one.
    At last the hour was gone, and again she rapped on the window. The boys came briskly in, breathing out clouds of frosty breath and shaking cold air from their coats and mufflers as they hung them up. They were glowing from cold and exercise.
    Laura said, “The fire is low. Would you put more coal on, please, Charles?”
    Willing, but slowly, Charles lifted the heavy hod of 17
    coal and dumped most of it into the stove.
    “I'll do that next time!” Clarence said. Perhaps he did not mean to be impertinent. If he did mean to be, what could Laura do? He was a chunky, husky boy, bigger than she was, and older. His brown eyes twinkled at her.
    She stood as tall as possible and rapped her pencil on the table.
    “School will come to order,” she said.
    Though the school was small, she thought best to follow the routine of the town school, and have each class come forward to recite. Ruby was alone in her class, so she must know every answer perfectly, for there was no one to help her by answering some of the questions.
    Laura let her spell slowly, and if she made a mistake, she might try again. She spelled every word in her lesson.
    Tommy was slower, but Laura gave him time to think and try, and he did as well.
    Then Martha and Charles and Clarence recited their spelling. Martha made no mistakes, but Charles missed five words and Clarence missed three. For the first time, Laura must punish them.
    “You may take your seat, Martha,” she said. “Charles and Clarence, go to the blackboard, and write the words you missed, three times each.”
    Charles slowly went, and began to write his words.
    Clarence glanced back at Laura with a saucy look.
    Rapidly he wrote large and sprawling letters that covered his half of the blackboard with only six words.
    Then turning toward Laura, and not even raising his hand for permission to speak, he said, “Teacher! The board's too small.”
    He was making a joke of punishment for failing in his lesson. He was defying Laura.
    For a long, dreadful moment he stood laughing at her, and she looked straight at him.
    Then she said, “Yes, the board is small, Clarence. I am sorry, but you should erase what you have written and write the words again more carefully. Make them smaller, and there will be room enough.”
    He had to obey her, for she did not know what she could do if he did not.
    Still grinning, good-naturedly he turned to the blackboard and wiped out the scrawls. He wrote the three words three times each, and below them he signed his name with a flourish.
    With relief, Laura saw that it was four o'clock.
    “You may put away your books,” she said. When every book was neat on the shelves beneath the desk tops, she said, “School is dismissed.”
    Clarence grabbed his coat and cap and muffler from their nail and with a shout he was first through the door-
    ' way.
    Tommy was at his heels, but they waited outside while Laura helped Ruby into her coat and tied her hood. More soberly, Charles and Martha wrapped themselves well against the cold before they set out. They had a mile to walk.
    Laura stood by the window and watched them go. She could see Mr. Brewster's brother's claim shanty, only half a mile away. Smoke blew from its stovepipe and its west window glinted back the light