The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,15

how to act as orphans. I read faster than any of the girls or even the boys, but this only made everyone mad at me, they said I was becoming capricious, taking on airs. How can books do anything bad to you? I wanted to ask. It was an important question because inside them is where I lived.

I was eleven when I left. The Hodgsons bid lowest for me and if you bid lowest the state had to hand you over. I was lucky since they were both very kind. They never had children of their own which was a pity. I helped Mrs. H. in the kitchen and caring for the house. She was so cheerful that this was easy for me, though the work could be hard. I helped Mr. Hodsgon, too, times when he had trouble getting hired men. Their farm was the highest in town, all the other hill farms had been abandoned, but he always swore he would be last to give up. I liked helping him mend walls, since he still used oxen and he let me slap their flanks and shout at them to get moving. He laughed when they just looked at me and refused to budge, as if saying “Who is this pigtailed little girl and why is she so bothered?”

I loved seeing things from the distance. When we finished work I would stick my arms out and balance my way along the stone wall past the briars to the highest part. In July where the hills unfolded was like a huge green comforter rolling away toward Canada, with a giant hand underneath plumping it out. Looking at this blew my smallness away and I vowed never to let it back.

I turned fifteen on Christmas the year the war commenced over in France. Mrs. H. wanted to have a talk but she knew it would distress me so she waited until the following week. It was snowing and we had stopped sewing to watch a deer try to hop her way through the drifted field.

“Well,” Mrs. H. said when we both sat down. “You’re grown now and that means we need to be looking after your future. There are lots of things you could be doing and it’s up to you which one to choose. Not right away. Why you can stay with us as long as you want. But presently.”

I could see it was hard for her, so I nodded, tried my best to smile.

“You could go down and work in the mills, they treat their girls very well now, it’s not like it used to be.”

She said this calmly but could not help frowning.

“You could go out west like so many girls, Iowa or even Montana, they have special trains, and we would arrange for you to work for a respectable family.”

She said this even more calmly but once again frowned.

“Or for that matter you could stay right here and get married. Not right away of course. In time. There are so few young men left but we would find one.”

She made her voice all bright, but once again her frown betrayed her. I did not give her an answer, because there was one thing I dreaded and finally had to ask.

“What about school? Vacation is over tomorrow and I want to go back.”

She looked at me and I read her look and turned away from it, we both turned away, since we knew how she had to answer and it was the first time she ever caused me pain.

“School is over for you, Beth. Why it would be high school and you know we can’t afford to board you out. You’re the smartest pupil in class, they always tell us that, and we know how much you love reading. I was talking to the principal and he says you can come back in June and deliver the commencement and you’re the first girl they ever asked.”

I tried keeping up. The library in town was six miles through the snow, but Mrs. H. would invent errands for me, parcels she wanted dropped at the various farms, since she knew they would give me something warm to drink and let me dry off by their fire. I tried keeping up in arithmetic and history but I could only carry so many books and there was so much I wanted to read just for pleasure. I had never read poetry before but now I read all I could. They had Ella