No more school! No matter if the arithmetic book was lost, the pencil box, the pencil sharpener that wouldn't sharpen anything. No more school forever.
Then autumn bonfires crackled, familiar things looked strange seen through smoke like flawed glass, and the children tried to eat potatoes baked in the blaze. "Hey, kids, gee! this spud's good!" But even Hoagland couldn't get far with the ash-grimed blistering hot skin and the cold raw inside. Yellow apples, frosty with dew, lay in the dew-drenched grass; bits of grass stuck to them; they made the children's teeth ache with cold. An organ grinder came through Chestnut Street. His monkey's fingers were quick and cold in the children's hands as it took their pennies. And the dark threat could no longer be ignored. School would begin soon—next week—to-morrow morning.
Jodie began lessons in the autumn. Kate taught drawing at the school, to pay for him and Charlotte. She was happy at the breakfast table, scooping tea out of the tea caddy with the red china frog on the lid, making bacon sandwiches for the eleven-o'clock recess. A jug of water and sunlight quivered on the table; holy water, its halo quivered above it on the ceiling. Jodie made mountains and rivers with his oatmeal and milk, and Kate, between bites, heard Charlotte's spelling. Charlotte always knew her spelling, and won a prize for it every year—a—passe-partouted
