Nell shrugged. “He’s been good enough to us. Came when the little ’uns were sick and never dunned us for payment. Not many like that around here.”
“Is his wife kind, too?”
“You should know, if you’re his friends.”
“Well, she’s kind to us,” Solomon said. “That doesn’t mean she’s kind to everyone. In fact, the doctor is concerned because someone insulted her.”
“Yes? Insults ain’t sticks and stones,” Nell said. “They won’t hurt her—I should know.”
“Someone insulted you, too?” Constance asked.
Nell laughed. “Would I notice?”
“I heard Mrs. Keaton implied you had stolen from the shop.”
“Implied?” Nell mimicked. “Accused, tried, and convicted me, more like. She still spreading that around? I can’t even go into the shop now. I’m afraid to send the children in case she has Heron chain them up, and Hen don’t have time to go. I’ve got to wait for the market every week and get what I need then. I don’t care. Market’s cheaper anyway.”
“Someone pointed out to Mrs. Keaton that she shouldn’t bear false witness.”
“Good,” said Nell, glancing up at the sky.
“Is it just you and your husband working?” Solomon said. “No children around to help?”
“They’re all at school.” For the first time, there was an air of pride about her. “Even Tommy, our youngest, and he’s only five. He’s another good man, that Mr. Ogden. He sees the brightness in the kids and makes it shine brighter. If you see what I mean.”
Constance nodded sagely, although, in fact, she didn’t really see the clumsy, silent young man as much of an inspiration to scholarship for wild boys and girls. She imagined he was more likely ridiculed, in much the same manner as Peregrine Mortimer had mocked him yesterday.
“You never went to school yourself, Mrs. Dickie?”
“Nah, nor Hen neither. But the world’s changing and I’m glad ours will have chances we didn’t. Not enough land here to provide for five in the future. They’ll have to make their own way—the girls and all, though I know there’s some against educating females.”
“I’m all in favor of it myself,” Constance said. “I didn’t go to school either, though my mother taught me to read and write.”
Nell looked at her with more interest. “You done all right for yourself, then, ain’t you?”
“I hope so. Thanks for your time.”
“Pleasure,” Nell said, puzzlement in her voice as she turned and strode back into the field.
As they walked back toward the gig, Solomon murmured, “Look at the window.”
A white-whiskered old man watched them from the small window beside the door of the house. Presumably Hen Dickie’s father Harry.
“Upstairs,” Solomon said, and then she saw what he had. A patch of newspaper had been tied across the tiny, broken attic window.
The adults might not read, but they certainly had uses for newsprint.
Chapter Eight
As Constance hadsuspected would be the case, much hilarity was emanating from the village schoolhouse. It was a long, single-story building, which might once have been two cottages knocked together perhaps at the turn of the century. There were two doors, so presumably the schoolmaster lived in one part and the classroom occupied the other.
Exchanging glances with Solomon, Constance followed the laughter and gently pushed open the larger door. An adult male voice spoke, not mingling with the laughter as she’d half expected, but talking between bursts.
And the children were loving it.
Constance and Solomon stood in a cloakroom filled with coats and hats, boys’ on one side, girls’ on the other. A half-glass door provided a window into the classroom, through which they could see Mr. Ogden standing at the far end of the room, leaping from place to place between bursts of talk, and more bursts of laughter. Sometimes he asked an obvious question and the children shouted out the answer.
At the desks in the front few rows were children ranging in age between about five and ten. Moving position, Constance could see a row of older children with open books who clearly were meant to be working on something else but were grinning as they too watched the antics of their teacher.
