There were twenty-four in the class, their ages ranging from seven to ten years. The older ones, Abbie knew, would probably not remain beyond the end of the autumn term. As it was, she could never be sure how many of them would be present on any particular day. Nearly all her pupils were the offspring of farmers or farm labourers, and when there was a conflict of priorities – the children’s school work or helping their parents in the home or on the farm – it was always the school work that came second. Perhaps there would come a day, she thought, when education was compulsory for all children. At present, though, such a hope seemed to have little chance of becoming reality. The sounds in the room were composed of the ticking of the clock, the scrape of the children’s chalks on their slates and the occasional whisper or sniff. At the moment they were working on some simple arithmetical problems that Abbie had written up on the blackboard. In ten minutes or so, at two thirty, she would bring the arithmetic lesson to an end and they would start work on their history studies.
