So Dorothy stayed for a while in Schoolhouse Number 43, called Sunflower School. She was quietly content there. This was not enough for either Aunty Em or the teacher of the school, Miss Ida Francis.
Ida Francis and Emma had become firm friends. Miss Francis was a regular caller to tea, which she drank sitting at the Gulches' one rickety table, little finger outstretched as if the place were grand. She could pour her heart out to Emma Gulch.
'They have finally, finally repaired the stove,' Miss Francis said once, eating Aunty Em's biliously colored cornbread. 'The poor little scholars are not being introduced to smoking via the school chimney any longer.'
'We must be grateful for that,' said Aunty Em with a chuckle. 'The next thing is to do something about the books.'
'I must say again, Mrs. Gulch, how grateful we are for your donation.'
'I do what I can,' said Aunty Em, smiling, with her eyes closed.
'Would that Squire Aiken took such an interest.'
Squire Aiken lived on the slopes of the hill south of the river, on the wooded side. He had peach orchards. His family had settled there from Kentucky. His family had been slave-staters.
'Are you surprised, with that background?' murmured Aunty Em, eyebrow raised.
'Hmmm,' said Miss Francis, without commitment. Aunty Em did not know that Miss Francis's parents had favored the South.
'And how is my dear little charge progressing?' said Aunty Em, gazing on Dorothy with fondness.
It was the moment Dorothy dreaded. The bilious cornbread went round and round in her mouth. It was supposed to be a treat, to have tea with Miss Francis.
'Well,' said Miss Francis looking around, pressing down a smile. ''Everything Dorothy does is as neat as wax.'
'You should see her at her chores,' said Aunty Em, nodding.
'All her work is quite brilliantly presented,' said Miss Francis, 'but it must be said that the content of her figure work and ciphering is not what it should be.'
'Dorothy, are you paying mind to your teacher?'
'Yes, Mmm,' whispered Dorothy.
'Speak up, Dorothy,' said Aunty Em. 'Sit up straight, and pay Miss Francis the compliment of your regard.' She turned back to her ally.
'Dorothy is always beautifully behaved, a very model in all respects,' said Miss Francis, still smiling at Dorothy. 'Except one. She is still stone silent. She does not put herself forward. Nor does she appear to fraternize with the other children.'
'Even now,' sighed Aunty Em, looking at the table in sadness and concern. 'It is the tragedy, hanging over her.'
Dorothy was so weary of being reminded of her tragedy. She did not remember it. It was a universe ago. She did not remember the old house, she sometimes forgot she had once had a little brother, and her mother was the flattest and dimmest of memories. She had long ago given up dreaming that her father might come for her one day and take her away. Her father didn't know or care. It came as something of a surprise to remember that he was still alive, Dorothy had grown so used to telling everyone that he was dead. The tragedy, as Aunty Em called it, seemed to have nothing to do with her.
'Perhaps also,' said Aunty Em, 'it is that the other children do not wish to mix with her.'
Aunty Em was coming to blame the rough local children of Zeandale. They ran barefoot in the dust and stole fruit from orchards and raided wildlife by the river. All sorts of mischief, while her Dorothy sat at home and polished and sewed and scrubbed and grew beautifully less.
Then Professor Hungerford left teaching to take advantage of all his many connections. He opened a business, offering abstraction and insurance. Aunty Em's loyalty to Miss Francis persisted for two years. Dorothy sat in the kitchen silent and still, sinking even deeper into a scholastic quagmire. Aunty Em felt compelled to ask Miss Francis to dinner.
Aunty Em told Miss Francis that something had to be done about Dorothy before it was too late. It was no reflection whatsoever on Miss Francis's program, but it was time that the child was given a different and more varied setting. With Professor Lantz now in charge, and Mrs. DeEtta Warren as his assistant, Aunty Em now had renewed confidence in Manhattan education. Miss Francis could do nothing but concur and skillfully manage to disguise a measure of relief.
So, though Zeandale now had a stone schoolhouse as well, Emma Gulch sent her quiet little mouse of a ward all the way to Manhattan rather than have her educated in the country. This was considered by the other farmers to be of a piece with the rest of her behavior.
It fell to Henry Gulch to take her in. All through the autumn of 1881, he and Dorothy would be up with the dawn. Through the long gentle ride to Manhattan, they would see the sun rise on fields and in forest. They would see the birds, though Uncle Henry would not insist on Dorothy naming them. He would let the birds be themselves. He let Dorothy be as quiet as she wanted to be, finally resting from work, her books in a bundle in the back, out of her arms. Often she fell asleep, leaning against him, listening to the plod of the horse's hooves in the dust.
Aunty Em was running the farm now, and running it well. It was prospering, and they did have hogs and they did have horses. There were plans finally to build an extension. Nothing grand, just a summer kitchen for Aunty Em to cook in during hot weather so that the single room in which they slept and ate would stay cool.
Winter came and was a bad one. Dorothy and Uncle Henry shared the same lap robes and jostled their feet on the hot stones taken out of the oven. They huddled together, and he tickled her. Uncle Henry tickled Dorothy and started to laugh, with broken teeth.
One night, in the middle of that winter, Dorothy started to bleed. She woke all wet and sticky down there. Something dreadful had happened. There would be blood on her nightdress, blood on her sheets. Bad blood, it was as if her bad blood were leaking out of her. Had she done anything unwittingly down there to cut herself? How
