Endure My Heart Read Online Free Page B

blurted it out. “We was wondering if you’d let us keep it here.”
    I stared as though he were an apparition from Hades. “Here, at the school you mean? No, no, I couldn’t consider it. It is too dangerous.”
    “It’s not dangerous at all. It’s the last place in the world he’d look.”
    “Oh, but if he should look!”
    “With the cold winter coming on, and warm clothes to be bought and all, it seems a pity…” He said no more, but looked at me with the eyes of a starving puppy. Lady, sitting at his feet, cast a similar glance at me, gently accusing.
    “It smells. The children would notice it at once on Monday morning,” I said brusquely. But I thought of my schoolchildren, walking home in their threadbare garments, with that winter wind getting colder by the day.
    “The smell’s no stranger to most of ‘em. They’d never notice it.”
    “No, I don’t like this. Let me think.” I suggested a couple of other spots, all of which were vetoed for one reason or another. “If I were ever caught, I’d lose my job.”
    “You’ll not get caught, miss,” he promised cockily.
    “I have the only key, except Miss Aldridge’s. If you are seen with it, it will be known where you got it.”
    “Nay, miss. It’ll only be known you dropped your key, and the wicked gentlemen picked it up and used it. We’d never be incriminating you, and you’ve the word of the gentlemen on that.”
    “No,” I said, making up my mind hastily. “I'll not give you the key, but I sometimes forget to close the back window in the teacher’s pantry. And mind you leave it open as well to get rid of the stench by Monday morning.”
    He grabbed my hand, then released it hastily with a beet-like blush, while Lady barked her approval. “You’re a right one, miss,” he said, beaming broadly.
    “I am a fool,” I replied. “And will be a very cold fool Monday morning with the window open all night. Never mind, go on with you. I’ll open the window before I leave. Can I give you a ride home, Jem? No—we’d better not be seen together,” I decided. Already my mind was turning devious on me.
    “You’re awake on all suits, miss. We’ll be frowning daggers at each other anytime we meet, but we thank ye kindly.”
    He went off home on foot, and I let him get well away before I left the school myself. Being an accessory before the fact was a larger, more serious crime than merely letting on I had not seen the boys, and it bothered my conscience more. All weekend I worried about it. Worried whether they would get caught, whether they would remember to leave the window open to kill the smell, wondered whether I could trust them. But their word was as good as a bond, and on that score I was fairly easy. It was a weighty business for me.
    It was weightily recompensed. On Monday morning I went early to my school to air it out if the gentlemen had neglected to do so. They had not neglected. There was no smell but the cheery, warm odor of hickory logs burning in the stove. They had been here before me, closed the windows and lit my fire for me. When I went to my desk to take out my attendance ledger, five golden guineas were placed neatly beneath it. I felt criminal indeed as I scooped them up and put them in the bottom of my reticule, carefully knotted into a handkerchief.
    Never did money burn such a hole in anyone’s pocket as those five guineas burned my reticule. What was I to do with them? One guinea can be spent up and the traces covered, but to buy five guineas’ worth of new supplies for the school would be remarked upon. I put them in the bottom drawer of my bureau, hidden beneath my petticoats, and said nothing.
    Andrew returned after having taken holy orders, a full-fledged minister now, but alas no more interested in the world than he had been when he left. I hesitated to intimate to him my wish that Edna remain with us, for while he scarcely notices the time of day, he does notice a strange body in the room, and dislikes