Read The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark for Free Online Page B

friend will be fine.” The arm lowered.
    “Write your letter in iambic pentameter, telling your friend anything you wish.” When three more hands were thrust into the air, she added, “And no, it doesn’t have to rhyme.”
    It wasn’t that she was clairvoyant, but after teaching school for over sixteen years, Lydia had developed an instinct for anticipating the questions that would accompany any new assignment. She pointed to the blackboard. “I’ve written some sample sentences. Let’s read them together.”
    “My Fa -ther took us to the shop for treats ” was delivered by twelve young voices in unison. Three minutes later, the only sounds in the room were scratchings of pencils upon paper and the occasional creak of wood as a student shifted in his chair. Lydia went to her own desk and started marking arithmetic papers. She looked up presently and frowned. In the front row, Phoebe Meeks was rubbing her eyes. Lydia rose from her chair and went over to her.
    “Let’s go to the cloakroom, Phoebe,” she said softly. Eleven sets of eyes sent curious looks her way, but at a warning lift of Lydia’s brows, they all darted back down to the task at hand. Painfully shy during her own school years, Lydia had too much empathy to scold or even counsel a student in front of his classmates. In the cloakroom she smiled at the thin, brown-haired girl to reassure her that she wasn’t about to be reprimanded.
    “You’ve been rubbing your eyes quite often today. Have you another headache?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” the girl murmured. Phoebe was not pretty like the children who graced the labels of bottles of castor oil and tins of cocoa, but she possessed a fine bone structure that would change into beauty when her face reached maturity.
    “Did you tell your mother about them?” Lydia asked.
    Phoebe’s green eyes evaded hers. “I thought it wouldn’t happen any more since you moved my desk.”
    “Will you tell her today? She needs to know.”
    “But I can see much better….”
    “If your eyes aren’t causing the problem, an oculist will rule that out. But we need to find out, Phoebe.” She put a hand lightly on the narrow shoulder. “And if you won’t tell your mother, I shall be forced to pay her a call.”
    Receiving a reluctant assurance from the girl that she would talk to her mother this evening, Lydia allowed her to return to the classroom. She couldn’t fault Phoebe for not wanting to wear spectacles. Those who wore them were not considered attractive by most people, no matter how clear the complexion or finely carved the bone structure. A terrible thing for a girl, for in every generation there seemed to be a certain number of healthy-sighted individuals who took it upon themselves to remind those less fortunate ones of just how unattractive spectacles were.
    Lydia scanned the three rows of desks to monitor her students’ progress, then fed the two goldfish in a bowl on top of the bookcase. The breeze had teased loose one of the curtains at a front window, and she went over to tie it back more securely. She had been spared the humiliation of eyeglasses. It was as if God had decided that natural plainness was enough of a burden. Taller than most boys during her school days, she walked with slumped shoulders until it dawned upon her that it was just as ridiculous to look like a question mark as to be overly tall. And one day she decided that the curls she labored over with a curling iron to camouflage her prominent ears consumed a fair amount of time that could be more enjoyably spent in the pages of a book. After thirty-four years of spinsterhood, romance was surely out of the question.
    She had learned not to mind it so much. At least she had had children—more than two hundred over the past sixteen years. Fourteen of those years were spent at a boarding school for girls in Glasgow. No matter the gender or location, the students brought her joy and frustration, laughter and sometimes sorrow, but they gave