Free The Saddle Maker's Son by Kelly Irvin

ha.”
    “You like to laugh?”
    She nodded. Rebekah put an arm around the girl. Seeing her laugh brought light to a cloudy day. “Me too. Laughing is one of the best things to do, isn’t it?”
    “Oh no, oh no!” Diego’s small face scrunched up in a frown, and he shot from his seat and raced down the aisle to the back of the room. “Pedro! Pedro!”
    “What is it?” Rebekah squeezed Lupe’s arm and let go. “What’s he doing?”
    Lupe scrambled after her brother. She glanced back. “Mouse.”
    “What?”
    “Tobias say it is mouse.”
    “What is mouse?”
    “Pedro.”
    “There it is.” Hazel hopped from her seat and shrieked. “Mouse, mouse, Teacher, there’s a mouse in the school!”
    “It’s just a mouse.” Susan bustled down the aisle after Diego. “Nothing to get excited about.”
    A mouse wasn’t Rebekah’s favorite kind of pet, but Caleb had had worse. Like a green garter snake. And a hamster. Hamsters were similar to mice. He’d even befriended some beetles. The turtles weren’t so bad, though.
    Lupe stuck her head under a desk, then another. “He is amigo. Diego sad if he lost.”
    Rebekah followed her and began to look as well. Anything to make Diego feel better. “Friend?” A little boy who’d left his home, his family, his country, would indeed want to hang on to whatever friends he found along the way on this terrible journey to a new country and new life. “Let’s help him look for Pedro.”
    The scholars needed no prompting. They scattered, peering in corners and under desks and behind the stove.
    “Got him!” Caleb held up the wiggling brown creature with long whiskers and a longer tail. “He’s cute.”
    Cute? He was wrinkled and had beady eyes.
    “Pedro. Pedro!” Diego hurled himself across the room. “Ratoncito.”
    “Ratoncito.” All the scholars joined in. “Ratoncito.”
    Rebekah slipped up next to Susan. “Ratoncito, Teacher?”
    “A friend is a friend.” Susan clapped her hands. The scholars dropped into their seats. Diego slipped Pedro back in his little home. Susan’s attempt to look stern failed. She smiled. “Everyone sit. Let’s learn a few more words, but without the show-and-tell.”
    Rebekah sidled closer. “The live show-and-tell?”
    “Sí.”
    Rebekah laughed. “Sí.” Show-and-tell had never been so much fun. “They’re learning from each other, though. That’s gut, isn’t it?”
    “It is gut. We can all learn from each other.” Susan cocked her head, her expression pensive. “See, teaching can be fun.”
    “I know that.” Rebekah slipped past her and picked up a piece of chalk. Time to put the algebra assignment up. “I think teaching is fun.”
    “You tell fibs and your nose will grow.”
    “I’m not.”
    Susan patted her shoulder. “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. I never thought I’d be a teacher either.”
    “But you like to read and write. You read books all the time and you write letters to your brother and sister every week. I’d rather be doing something.”
    “Reading and writing are doing something.”
    “I know. I just thought I would be doing something different.”
    “Don’t give up. Say your prayers and wait on Gott’s timing.” Susan’s expression turned stern. “I noticed you’ve stopped going to the singings.”
    “No point in it.” Unless Tobias Byler decided to go. Would he? Someone who didn’t know all about the Lantz sisters and how one of them had abandoned the community. He had been so kind to the children, giving them the apples, taking them home. He was a nice man. And not bad to look at.
    Here she stood weaving a future from thin air. From hopes that were no more than rays of sun that dissipated as if clouds deliberately covered her patch of sky. Tobias had seen her as bossy and wayward, not fraa material. She’d seen it in his eyes. If only she could be more like her big sister Deborah. A mother bird who gathered chickadees under her wings as naturally as