“Does it matter?” asked Fran.
“Fair point,” said Kate. She’d been spending more and more time with Fran when not on her rounds, grateful for the other woman’s easy company. Kate was, if she was being honest, avoiding Emmie, who kept trying to have discussions about their feelings. Kate didn’t want to discuss her feelings. Much of the time she was so tired, she wasn’t even sure she had feelings, and she was really quite happy with that. “Poor Alice. The Ledbetter’s got her.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fascinated to hear all about Clovis’s triumph at whatever it was,” said Fran. Next to the refreshment table, Maud was whispering something to Liza, one eye on Mrs. Rutherford. “Maud’s looking quite cat and canary.”
“Have you heard she traveled first class on a third-class ticket?” Maud had only told them six times.
“No, did she?” With mock seriousness Fran said, “The real problem was that no one had thought to buy her a first-class ticket in the first place. This was only her way of putting the world back the way it ought to be.”
“Like those people who insist that if they’d been born centuries ago, they’d have been nobles and not peasants.”
“In a pointy hat,” agreed Fran. “With a tame unicorn by her side. Don’t mention it to Miss Ledbetter, though, or you’ll hear more than you ever wanted about it, with excursions into The Song of Roland and the Almanach de Gotha.”
“Were those at the same time?”
“I have no idea. I was always more interested in physics than history. We aren’t planning on letting Miss Ledbetter loose on those poor children, are we?”
“Not the littler ones. That’s Emmie and Anne Dawlish and Nell Baldwin. Emmie will recite lyric poetry at them, but I think they should be able to weather it.” She was being catty about Emmie and she shouldn’t be. The truth was, she was still annoyed at Emmie, even though she knew she shouldn’t be. And she was still punishing Emmie in small ways, even though she knew she shouldn’t be. It made Kate feel petty and horrible but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Miss Ledbetter’s supposed to be helping to teach the older children.”
“You taught older girls, didn’t you?”
“Yes, French. I don’t think that would be much use here.”
Fran raised a brow. “Still.”
“I was a terrible teacher,” Kate said firmly. It wasn’t that she disliked children; she just had no talent for making them either love or mind her, not like Emmie, who collected small children like the Pied Piper. “I hated every minute of it and so did my unfortunate pupils. I refuse to inflict myself on these poor children.”
Fran looked with concern at the group in front of them. “They’re so quiet. Children that age—they should be making such a din we could scarcely hear ourselves think.”
Miss Dawlish was working on getting a group of children to link hands and dance in a circle to “Sur le Pont d’Avignon.” She waved her arms about, bending exaggeratedly from the waist. “Les beaux gar?ons font comme ca!”
The beaux gar?ons hung their heads and looked uncertainly at the ground.
No one was running. No one was singing. No one was misbehaving. Emmie was running this way and that, with hoops and ropes, trying to coax children into activity, with distinctly limited success.
“I don’t know much about children, but I do have four brothers. They used to tear through our house, screaming like banshees, chasing each other.” It had driven Kate mad at the time, the constant din, the way they would fling themselves at each other and at her. Although they were rather sweet when they were snuggled up in her lap. For about five minutes.
“My brother and I were the same way. It gave my mother headaches.” Fran thought for a moment. “To be fair, everything gave my mother headaches. But Freddie and I really were that awful.”
“Do you think it’s because they’re undernourished?” asked Kate doubtfully, eyeing the subdued children. They were certainly thin, there was no denying that, their skin an unhealthy gray, but it was more than that.
“They haven’t played for three years.” Dr. Stringfellow came and stood beside them, her eyebrows, for once, at rest. “They don’t remember how. Some of them have no memory of life being other than this. It’s sickening.”
“Is there anything we can do for them?”
“Not my department. I’ll worm the ones who need worming, but there’s no pill for having the childhood crushed out of you. If there were, I’d dispense it in bulk. And bill Kaiser Wilhelm.”