A Gown of Spanish Lace Read Online Free Page A

just heard. The boss only nodded.
    “Ain’t no woman within miles of here,” Sam reminded him.
    “Thet means we gotta find one.”
    “Find one. How?”
    “I ain’t got it all figured out yet, but it’ll come.”
    “An’ if an’ when ya do find one—how ya aim to get them together? An’ what makes ya sure he’ll—go fer her? He ain’t got no idee what a woman’s even about.”
    The big man gave the smaller one a withering look and then turned back to the table as though the absurd comment deserved no reply. He hiked his large frame a little closer to the table and returned to drumming his fingers in an irritating fashion, his brow furrowing with deep, dark thoughts.
    At length he turned. “We’ve got a lot of figurin’ to do, Sam,” he said, then nodded his head toward the coffeepot to indicate he’d be needing his cup refilled.

Chapter Three
    Ariana
    Saturday walks became an anticipated part of Ariana’s week. She no longer resisted her mother’s counsel. She had learned that she was more productive after a stroll in the neighboring woods or along the local stream. Often she invited one or another of her students to accompany her. It became a time to build relationships and teach lessons that could not be learned in the schoolroom. Ariana prayed that she might be able to teach not only about life but also about the Giver of Life. Not just scientific facts of the world but about the One who established the Laws of Nature. Not just mathematics but about the One who made the consistency of mathematics a possibility.
    “God has given us an ordered world,” she said often, and she hoped her students would see and understand what she was trying to convey as they looked at the world around them.
    If there were any whose children attended the little schoolhouse on the hill who thought that the preacher’s daughter was bringing “too much religion” into the classroom, they never voiced it. Even the owner of the local saloon suggested that “a little law and order wouldn’t hurt” his two offspring any. He thought the world was bound to quickly chip away any “excess goodness” they might obtain.
    “We need us some high principles,” said the school board chairman in a community meeting. “And I for one don’t know where to find ’em ’ceptin’ in the Good Book. Far as I’m concerned, thet little gal can pour in ’em all the Bible learnin’ they can hold. Make upright citizens of ’em, the way I see it.”
    Others seemed to agree. Ariana thought of her teaching in the local school as an addition to her Sunday school class in her father’s church. Not all the townsfolk felt Sunday services a necessity. So her Saturday walks were one more means of bringing valuable lessons to her students who might not be attending church.
    There were those few who had little patience with the biblical teaching. But it could also be said that, by and large, those individuals had little use for any teaching at all.
    “Can’t ’magine a boy his age goin’ off to school. When I was his age I drove a team of mules and put in sixty acres of crop each summer,” huffed one elderly man.
    “What do young gals need all thet book learnin’ fer?” scoffed another. “Don’t help none with makin’ a pot of stew or hoein’ a garden.”
    Ariana chose to ignore such remarks. But she often had to bite her tongue to keep from responding with a lecture.
    “If the West is ever to be civilized and prosperous,” she wanted to say, “we need people who are educated. Educated not just in book learning—but in moral living. That’s the only hope for taming the West and making it a place of fulfilled promise for future generations.”
    Ariana determined to do all she could to prepare her students for the future, whether or not every townsperson approved.

    “You have such pretty dresses.”
    The words were spoken with such wistfulness that Ariana almost felt like apologizing. She had chosen Chloe Travis, a