Free One Glorious Ambition by Jane Kirkpatrick

Charles and Joseph came into the room the first time and plopped into their chairs, surrounded by girls who simply stared.
    “These are my brothers,” Dorothea said. She wanted to dance at the news. They
were
together at last. She had told the boys not to call her Thea in the classroom, and they mostly complied. She would hold them to high academic and behavioral standards.
    “You didn’t finish your writing assignment, Charles. That must be completed before you eat your lunch.”
    “Ah, Thea … I mean, Miss Dix. My stomach growls.” She raised her finger at him. “It’s a rule, Charles. You must not defy me.”
    “You’re not my mother,” he mumbled but returned to his work.
    She required Joseph to wear a placard after he pulled up a plant rather than study it when she took the class outside. It was the first time she had used the dreaded placard here, and she wished it hadn’t been Joseph who introduced it to the other students. But at least they all knew she had no favorites.
    “Grandmamma won’t like it,” Joseph told Dorothea as he tugged at the placard.
    “You’ll have to explain what you did then, and we’ll see if she disapproves of the consequence.”
    “Be glad it’s not Papa,” Charles told him. “He used the switch on us.”
    She shivered at Charles’s mention of the willow switch. At least she had found a means for order that did not require suffering.
    “It is your failure that your students need to be disciplined,” her grandmother told her. She had come by the school after the other children had left. The faithful Benji panted at her feet. “Joseph does not need such a placard.”
    “He misbehaved. I cannot show favorites. What would you have me do?”
    “Perhaps your lessons are too easy for him. He’s not challenged. He’s a bright boy. I think he doesn’t need your lessons. I’ll keep him at home.”
    She had failed with her own brother. Maybe others could teach all these children better. The truth of that tempered heraccomplishment with the school and made her wonder when Charles would be pulled out as well.

    Cousins Grace and Marianna lived in a modest home, and Grace’s husband, once a sea captain, Dorothea learned, had left them a comfortable stipend after his death. Grace looked much the same, and her fingernails were chipped, her skin sallow. After a light supper of cod and fresh greens, Marianna showed Dorothea her room.
    “See my picture?” The child handed her a pencil drawing of lilies in a common pond done on good paper.
    “I had no idea you were an artist,” Dorothea told her.
    “Yes, Auntie. It’s my favorite thing to do.”
    “Your writing is also excellent.”
    “Pictures make the time go so fast I forget to eat, Mummy says.”
    “When we find things we love, we do forget to eat and even sleep,” Dorothea told her. The child’s eyes lit up as they talked.
    “Oh, I sleep lots. So does Mummy, but that’s because she’s sick.”
    “I’m not sick.” Grace had followed them. She brushed wrinkles from a Dresden doll’s dress holding court on Marianna’s bed. “I’m just tired. Chasing after you, little one.” She poked Marianna’s tummy and the girl laughed.
    Dorothea looked away, not wishing to intrude. But she achedfor Marianna. It was hard to have a mother who was ill in body or in mind.

    Dorothea began creating opportunities for Marianna and the other students to paint and draw. She even hired an art teacher. A few more children challenged her order, but she did not use the placard. Instead, she shamed them with words and later felt worse than if she had switched them. She worked harder to find interesting ways of teaching her subjects, hoping that discipline would be less troubling.
    Before long, she returned the supper invitation, inviting Grace and Marianna to Mrs. Hudson’s savory soup. Other boarders supped at the table as well, with the conversation bouncing from theology to politics to plants. A legislator sat at the head of