Bloody Lessons by M. Louisa Locke Page A

Miss Thorndike to review the progress the student teacher was making. The culmination of her training would come when the young woman would lead the class entirely by herself for a week, under the observation of both Laura and Miss Thorndike. If Hattie wasn’t going to have any time for her, then Laura looked forward to being able to discuss her classes in detail with Miss Thorndike.
    “Kitty must leave us now. Her father’s carriage will be waiting for her, won’t it , dear?” Miss Thorndike nodded to Miss Blaine, whose alabaster cheeks turned bright red. “I, however, would like to stay a bit longer, Miss Dawson, if it is convenient, to make sure you don’t have any additional questions.”
    Laura watched with some sartorial envy as Miss Blaine pulled on a pair of expensive kid gloves that were dyed a sky blue to match her fashionably tight-fitting, cuirass-styled suit. After she left, Laura offered to make tea for Miss Thorndike, who had begged her to call her Della, using the kettle that stayed at the boil on the oil stove in the teachers’ room. Della Thorndike, obviously well known by the other Clement teachers, chatted with three women stopping by to check their mail boxes before leaving for the day.
    While waiting for the pot to steep, Laura covertly examined Della, who was one of those silver blondes with soft, creamy skin that looked ageless. Laura would have judged her to be still in her late twenties if she hadn’t mentioned that she was fifteen when she’d started teaching nearly twenty years earlier. She was dressed in an elegant ensemble, a dark green satin underskirt with matching plaid wool overskirt, black ribbon trimming, and a delicate black lace ruff, starched to frame her long pale neck and her jet black earrings, which glinted in the room’s gas light. Laura wondered if the Misses Moffet would be able to produce anything that beautiful for her, then added to her list of grievances that Andrew Russell’s appearance on Saturday had squelched any chance of Hattie going shopping with her that day.
    As Laura listened to Della’s easy conversation with the other teachers, the bereft feeling she’d been fighting all weekend returned. How was she ever going to find a friendship as dear to her as the one she’d had with Hattie? Laura had never told any of her family how frightened she’d been her first week at San Jose Normal School. At only sixteen, she had never been away from home before, and because she’d been taught at home by her mother, this was also her first extended experience with people her own age. She’d found her classmates mystifying, as if they were talking to each other in a coded language. Then she’d met Hattie, who lived in her boarding house, and everything changed.
    Every room Laura entered became welcoming as long as she was pulled along in Hattie’s wake. Hattie turned every missed exam question, muffed recitation, or awkward social encounter into a funny story they would share at night over their hot cocoa. Hattie always made her feel special, cherished, and even brave. Brave enough to go off to her first teaching assignment at Cupertino Creek. Even though she’d made a mess of that job, she had survived by telling herself that once she was reunited with Hattie, everything would be all right. Now it turned out Hattie had pledged herself to another, and nothing would ever be the same again.
    Della turned to Laura and drew her into the small group of other teachers, saying, “Dear Laura, you must come here this minute. Miss Beale is longing to ask if you are familiar with a certain Ned Goodwin, her fiancé, who is currently at San Jose Normal School.”
    “Oh, yes,” Laura said, shaking Miss Beale’s hand. “Ned was in the class behind me, but we took botany together with Miss Norton. A very lively mind and well-liked by his classmates,” she continued, guessing that the quiet Miss Beale wouldn’t want to hear how entrancing her female classmates had found