The other was Martha Price, who knew numbers better than letters and hoped to keep accounts for her father’s shop.
They painted the shelves a warm cream color and repaired the window latches.
Daniel visited only once during those first weeks.
He arrived with a wagon of donated books and asked where Emily wanted them.
She pointed to the empty shelves.
He rolled up his sleeves and carried crates without summoning a servant.
Sarah watched him with undisguised curiosity.
When he had gone, she asked whether dukes always carried their own furniture.
Emily laughed for the first time in days.
“I suspect this one has decided to be troublesome.”
The reading room opened on a bright Saturday morning.
Eleven girls came through the door, followed by two mothers who pretended they had only come to inspect the premises.
Emily gave each child a small card bearing her name and the date of her first loan.
A girl named Ruth stood at the back and refused to approach the desk.
Her father worked at the quarry, and her boots were patched with twine.
Emily recognized the look on her face.
It was the expression of someone expecting to be told she did not belong.
Emily knelt beside her.
“Would you like to choose a book?”
Ruth glanced at the shelves.
“I have no money.”
“You do not need any.”
“Not even a penny?”
“Not even a penny.”
Ruth chose a book about birds and held it with both hands all the way home.
Emily watched her leave and felt a quiet satisfaction unlike anything she had known at Oak Haven.
The work was difficult and imperfect.
The stove smoked, the roof leaked, and one donor insisted that girls should read nothing more ambitious than moral tales.
Emily argued with him politely and kept the mathematics books.
She was beginning to understand that independence did not mean freedom from disagreement.
It meant the ability to disagree without fearing the loss of supper or shelter.
One evening Daniel found her repairing a broken shelf after the children had gone.
He had come to deliver a letter from the trustees, but he remained to hold the timber while she drove in the nails.
“You could hire a carpenter,” he observed.
“I could,” she agreed.
“Then why are we doing this?”
“Because the carpenter cannot come until Thursday, and the books must go somewhere before tomorrow.”
Daniel steadied the board.
“You have an answer for everything.”
“Only for things I have thought about.”
