Brightest and Best (23 page)

Joshua Glick had been right. As soon as word got out that Gideon was keeping his girls home from school, other households did the same. No matter how many times Gideon said that he did not judge another man’s conscience on the matter, other fathers seemed to look to his example.

Yet the closest any of the ministers had come to preaching on the subject was to choose a Bible passage exhorting kindness to neighbors, as they might have done at any Sunday worship service of the year.

Gideon bowed his head, making a prayer of the final hymn.

Where shall I go? I am so ignorant. Only to God can I go, because God alone will be my helper. I trust in You, God, in all my distress. You will not forsake me. You will stand with me, even in death. I have committed myself to Your Word. That is why I have lost favor in all places. But by losing the world’s favor, I gained Yours. Therefore I say to the world: Away with you! I will follow Christ.

Gideon made sure Tobias remained with the men to transform the benches of worship into tables for a meal in the King barn. He was glad for his coat this morning, and grateful that the next Sunday service was scheduled in a heated home large enough to accommodate the congregation. A juicy, steaming morsel of pork dangled from his fork on its way to his open mouth when Gideon felt a little hand thudding against his back. He turned to see Gertie. The girls were supposed to be eating with the women, under Ella’s supervision. Miriam was home ill.

“
Daed
,” Gertie said, “Katie Glick said that you’re going to jail because I’m not in school. I don’t want you to go to jail.”

Gideon swung his legs over the bench so he could take her in his lap. “I am not going to jail.”

“Promise?”

“Only God can promise. You know that.”

“I’ll go to school, and I won’t draw any pictures or sing any songs. I’ll only read the alphabet and do my sums.”

“Don’t you like learning at home with Ella?” Gideon said.

“Yes, I do. She makes everything interesting.”

Gideon nodded. “Then let’s keep doing that.”

“But you’ll go to jail,
Daed
!”

“I’m not going to jail.” He kissed the top of her head. “Now go find Ella and finish your lunch.”

The men around the table chewed silently, some of them staring at Gideon as he picked up his fork.

“She might be right,” Aaron King said. “We could all go to jail.”

“The fine was barely more than the cost of cotton for a child’s dress,” Gideon said. “It’s hardly a foreshadowing of jail.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Chester Mast said. “Perhaps our children should all be in school for now.”

“Chester!” Gideon’s jaw dropped. “You’re the one building a school on your own land.”

“And I intend to see it used someday—sooner rather than later. My boys have been out of school the last few days, but I’m going to send them back tomorrow with a proviso.”

Gideon lifted both eyebrows. The clinking of forks ceased.

“Some of the subjects the older children study are beyond what any of us regard as necessary, so in those subjects I will instruct my sons not to complete the assigned work.”

Isaiah Borntrager laughed. “Chester Mast, you have spoken the word of the Lord.”

Hardly.
Gideon ran his tongue across his bottom lip while he thought.

“Health, world governments, art, other frivolous classes—my boys will be present in class, and I cannot control what falls on their ears,” Chester said. “But I do have a say in what they focus their minds on, and it will not be these subjects.”

“Gideon, what about you?” Aaron said. “Will you send your children back to school with these instructions?”

Gideon pictured Savilla’s copy of
The Secret Garden.
Gertie’s graven image was hidden in his dresser. He might need to present it to the school board as an example of unacceptable instruction.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

Gideon opened the accounts ledger lying at the center of the desk in the small alcove where he kept his papers. A shadow fell over the paper, and he looked up.

“May I interrupt you?” James said.

“Of course. How is Miriam today?”

“That’s what I want to discuss,” James said. “It broke her heart not to be well enough for church yesterday.”

“Everyone asked after her.”

“I will stay home and make sure she rests,” James said. “But she will not want to stay down long.”

Miriam was like her niece in that way. Right up until the week that Betsy died, Gideon had urged her to stop trying to do everything on her own.

“I want to help,” Gideon said. “What can we do for Miriam?”

“A few changes will make things easier for her,” James said. “Small things that she won’t argue against.”

“Whatever you have in mind.”

“First,” James said, “I want to put up a railing. We have only two steps up into the
dawdihaus,
but I would feel better if she had a railing.”

“That’s a simple thing,” Gideon said.

“And I want to bring a comfortable chair into your kitchen,” James said. “She needs to be able to get off her feet but still keep an eye on the stove.”

“There’s plenty of room under the corner window,” Gideon said. They should have done it years ago.

James scratched his head. “I’m concerned about the stairs up to the bedrooms, but I can’t think of a way to keep her from going up and down.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Gideon said. “I’ll say the children are old enough now that there’s no reason to coddle them. They can carry up their own laundry, and I’ll put a broom and a dust rag in the hall closet. Miriam won’t have to go upstairs.”

“She’ll be suspicious,” James said. “She won’t like the idea of the children doing her work.”

“It won’t be her work. It will be their work from now on.” Gideon paused. “Do you really think she’ll be all right, James?”

James looked out the window. The delay in his response caused an extra heartbeat in Gideon’s chest.

“James?”

“I’m sure it’s temporary,” James said. “She needs more rest. But she will always think taking care of somebody else is more important than taking care of herself.”

“I can ask Ella to stay around more,” Gideon said. “She doesn’t have to run off the moment the day’s lessons are finished.”

James nodded. “Miriam enjoys Ella.”

“And Ella enjoys Miriam.”

When Gideon and Ella married, Miriam could really let go of daily responsibilities. Miriam would respect Ella’s new role to manage the house and children. Ella had ably managed her father’s home for eleven years. She had learned well from her own mother and older sisters the skills she needed for cooking and gardening and canning and milking. At the same time, Gideon had no doubt that Ella would enjoy having Miriam nearby for advice or companionship, someone to sit with on the front porch and snap peas or husk corn, without letting Miriam exhaust herself.

Perhaps James was counting on this scenario, and counting the weeks until the date Gideon and Ella would arrange with the bishop.

Looking back, Gideon could not imagine how he would have managed during the last five years without James and Miriam, and he hoped they would feel no compunction to leave when he married again. Their departure would leave a gaping hole in his children’s hearts. But they had taken on the care of three young children at an age when most people were enjoying grandchildren, not running after toddlers.

Miriam deserved the rest that the union between Gideon and Ella would bring her.

The plan suffered from one consequential complication.

How long would Gideon’s kitchen table serve as adequate space for daily lessons with two girls?

“Where’s Miriam?” Gertie asked.

“She’s resting.” Ella tapped the primer page. “Can you sound out the next sentence?”

“She’s been resting since Saturday,” Gertie said. “That’s three days. When is she going to be finished resting?”

Savilla sighed. “When she’s feeling better, silly.”

“Don’t call me names.”

Ella gave Savilla a warning eye.

“Sorry,” Savilla muttered, lowering her gaze back to her own book about the nocturnal habits of small animals.

“Are you going to make us lunch?” Gertie asked.

“I suppose so,” Ella said. Lunch was several hours away.

Gertie swung her feet under the table. One shoe came into contact with Savilla’s shin.

“Ow!” Savilla glared at Gertie.

Ella wasn’t sure she had ever seen that expression on Savilla’s face before. Perhaps both girls were always on their best behavior around her, cautioned by their father to mind their manners. Now that she was teaching them and would soon be living with and caring for them, she was bound to see another side to their relationship.

“Keep your feet to yourself, please,” Ella said.

“That’s not what Miss Simpson says.” Gertie folded her hands and placed them in her lap. “She says, ‘Hands and feet, nice and neat.’”

After nearly ten years of teaching, Margaret Simpson would have a long list of pithy reminders for classroom behavior.

“Miss Simpson always asks how the bus ride was,” Gertie said.

“That’s thoughtful of her,” Ella said, tapping the page again.

“Then she makes sure everyone has a lunch bucket. She doesn’t want anyone to be hungry at school.”

“She’s very kind.”

“Can we pack lunch buckets?” Gertie looked up, hopeful.

“We don’t need buckets, sil—” Savilla cut herself off. “We’re sitting right in the kitchen. We can have lunch with
Daed
and Ella and James and Miriam.”

“Let’s concentrate,” Ella said. “Then you can surprise everyone with the new words you learned.”

Gertie put a finger under the first of three simple sentences on the page. Ella watched the girl’s delicate lips go through the motions of finding the right formation for a
p
sound and silently add the other letters before pronouncing
put.

Gertie looked up. “Are we going to have a chalkboard? At school we had a chalkboard.”

“We could ask your
daed
,” Ella said, “but since it’s just us, we can use paper.”

Savilla closed her book around a finger. “May I go in the other room to read, please?”

Ella nodded. “You can tell me later about any parts you didn’t understand.”

It would be impossible for anyone to concentrate through Gertie’s chatter. Savilla tucked in her chair, as she always did, before leaving the room with relief.

“Miss Simpson gave us silent reading time,” Gertie said. “We were supposed to use it to try to sound out new words.”

“Would you like to have silent reading time, Gertie?” Against the left side of Gertie’s head, her coiled braid sagged, and Ella reached over to adjust a pin.

The child shook her head. “I didn’t like that part. It was more fun when we got to talk.”

Gertie missed the other children, a factor Gideon may not have taken into consideration in his decision to keep her home. Margaret Simpson’s classroom was in an
English
school, but she was an experienced, qualified teacher. Margaret would know what to say right now to encourage Gertie to focus on the task before her. While Gertie had been in school for just a few weeks, Margaret’s class was her only experience of formal instruction. No wonder she measured the experience of sitting at the kitchen table with Ella against being in the classroom of a trained teacher.

“Let’s read for fifteen more minutes,” Ella said. “Then you can decide whether you would rather work on sums or handwriting while I see how Savilla is doing.”

They were just two sisters in two grades, and already Ella wondered how the teachers in the old one-room schoolhouse had managed with thirty or forty students spanning eight grades.

M
argaret packed the leather satchel she carried between home and school. Today’s teachers meeting had not been on the Thursday afternoon schedule. Mr. Tarkington came around to the classrooms only an hour ago requesting that teachers remain after school. Margaret had escorted her pupils to their waiting buses and returned to her classroom to pick up her things, planning to leave as soon as the meeting concluded. Gray would be waiting for her at the diner for lemon cake and coffee.