Read Online That Forgetful Shore by Trudy Morgan-Cole - Free Book Online Page B

her home from church, could there? Yet no such overtures have been made. And considering what he did when she was still a schoolgirl – well, no. That must not be thought of. It makes no sense. If he were to court her, to propose, it would settle not only the future but the past; it would make sense of everything that had gone before. Until that happens, certain incidents from the past must remain forever shrouded. Forever shrouded . Another lovely phrase to try out, to roll around on the tongue.
    â€œSo, you likes it, being a teacher?” Jacob John asks, his question sawing into her thoughts like a blunt knife cutting into rope, unable to sever them cleanly. “You must have some patience with them young ones, is all I can say.”
    â€œThey’re not so bad,” Triffie says quickly. Triffie is finding Fred Mercer as poor at conversation as Jacob John is finding Kit, though Kit thinks it’s unlikely Fred’s thoughts are taken up with deeper things. Likely he just can’t think of anything to say.
    Triffie, though, can talk to anyone. She’d talk cod out of the water, that one , Kit thinks.
    Triffie says, “I had a grand time with them last year – there’s some right smart youngsters in that primary class, isn’t there, Kit? Young Mattie White – now he’s a bright one, but there’s Amelia Snow, too, hasn’t got any of his advantages and yet look how quick she is.”
    â€œSmart as paint,” Kit agrees. “She’s already going through the Fourth Royal Reader even though she’s supposed to be in the second. She can’t help it – she got the first, second and third ones all read, and half the other books in the classroom too. I wish I could get a few more books in here, for young ones like her that can’t read ’em fast enough. There’s never been enough books in that classroom for anyone who liked to read – was there, Trif? Sure it was even worse when we were coming up.”
    â€œThere was always plenty of books for me,” Jacob John says. “Ain’t that so, Fred? More than enough books for the likes of you and me – sure I thought that old Fourth Reader would’ve been the death of me, thought we’d never get through that.”
    â€œI never did get through it,” Fred says. Like many of the boys, Fred stopped school when he was ten: Jacob John lasted a year longer. Girls are more likely than boys to finish schooling in a place like Missing Point. And there are families, like Kit’s, who see the value of a daughter with an education who can earn her own keep as a teacher for a few years before she settles down to get married.
    â€œI like teaching,” Kit says now. A sudden burst of gaiety lightens her mood, lightens the air around all four of them – for though they rely on Triffie to keep the conversation going, it’s from Kit that they all catch their mood, somber or merry depending on her whim. Even Fred laughs when she says, “Some of the young fellows think a lady teacher won’t whip ’em, or that they needn’t listen to me because they remember I was in the schoolroom with them only two years ago. I suppose a few of ’em gave you the same trouble, Trif? But Peter French won’t make that mistake again, not since I called him up to the front for carrying on when he was supposed to be working on his arithmetic. Well he said right back to me, brazen as you please, ‘What are you going to do, call in Mr. Bishop?’ And I told him, I don’t need Mr. Bishop to give you what you’ve earned, and I made him stick out his hand. He put it out with a smirk, like nothing I could do could ever hurt him, and I let fly with the ruler. My word! I think they heard him screech all the way back home. His mother came up to me in church this morning, told me whatever I done to him it must have worked, for he’s practising his sums at home and