The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [28]
"Real wages?"
"Every child pays fourpence a week. Sometimes they pay with eggs or wool or such things instead. It will help, Kit, a great deal."
The more she thought about it, the more pleasant the dame school sounded to Kit. Surely, if she were earning wages they would no longer expect her to scrub floors and weed the onions. Even more, a feeling of satisfaction, even of triumph began to grow in her mind. Later that day, as she sat alone with Mercy over their wool combs, she spoke her thoughts aloud.
"If I am earning wages," she said suddenly, "then perhaps you will all think I am of some use, even if I'm not a boy." She could not keep out of her voice the bitterness that had rankled all these weeks.
Mercy laid down her carding and stared at her cousin.
"What do you mean, Kit?"
"That first night I was here," confessed Kit, "Judith said if only I had been a boy—"
"Oh, Kit!" Tears suddenly flooded Mercy's eyes. "You heard that? Why didn't you tell me before?"
Kit looked down in embarrassment. She wished now that she had held her tongue.
"She didn't mean what you think, Kit. It's just that father needs a boy so much to help." Mercy hesitated.
"Mother has never told you much about our family, has she?" she went on. "You see, there was a boy, their first child, two years older than I. I barely remember him. We both caught some kind of fever. I got well, except for this leg, but he died."
"I didn't know," whispered Kit, stricken. "Poor Aunt Rachel!"
"There was another boy, after Judith," Mercy continued. "He lived only a week. Mother said it was the will of God, but sometimes I have wondered. He was very tiny, born early, but on the third day he had to be baptized. It was January and terribly cold. They said the bread froze on the plates at communion that Sunday. Father bundled him up and carried him to the Meeting House. He was so proud! Well, of course that was a long time ago, but after that Father changed. And it has been a struggle, trying to manage without a son to help. That's all we meant, Kit."
Kit sat silent, her own bitterness forgotten. I will try harder to understand him, she vowed. But oh, poor Aunt Rachel, who had been always laughing!
CHAPTER 9
"Good children must,
Fear God all day,
Parents obey,
No false thing say,
By no sin stray"
SIX VOICES chanted the words in unison. Two small heads bent earnestly over each of the three dog-eared primers which were all the dame school could boast.
"That's fine," praised Kit. "Now go on."
"Love Christ alway,
In secret pray,
Mind little play,
Make no delay,
In doing good."
At the opposite end of the kitchen Mercy, having generously alloted to Kit the primer readers, was laboring with the beginners. They sat hunched on the bench, each holding in hand a hornbook, a small stout-handled wooden slab on which was fastened a tiny sheet of paper, protected by a thin strip of transparent horn held in place by a narrow leather strip and tiny brass nails. At the top of the single page was printed the alphabet, and at the bottom the Lord's Prayer. The children wore their horns strung on cords around their necks. Now they squinted at the blurred letters and painfully repeated out loud:
"A, f, af
f, a, fa
a, l, al
1, a, la."
What patience Mercy had! If only patience were contagious like mumps. Kit sighed and turned back to the primer. Of all the dreary montonous sermons! Grandfather would never have allowed her to learn from such a book. She wished she could remember how her grandfather had taught her the syllables and words. She suspected that he had made up his own lessons, and now, as her small pupils spelled out the gloomy text, she could not resist following his example. She seized a quill pen and printed two lines on a scrap of the curly birch bark which the children collected to use in place of costly paper. She passed the little scroll to young Timothy Cook.
"Timothy Cook
Jumped over the brook,"
he read with