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giggle. Her heart was suddenly so full of love, it felt like it
would burst.
After the table was cleared and the dinner dishes done,
Mama lit the lamp and pulled her knitting out of the
basket by the stove and Papa pulled out the trundle bed in
the back room. Hattie crawled beneath the colorful quilts
as Papa slid Abraham in beside her. His tiny, warm body
curled up against Hattie’s back, and he was snoring in an
instant.
Mama and Papa talked softly in the front room, their
voices rising and falling in a duet with the gentle
click click
of Mama’s knitting needles. Hattie listened until her mind
wandered comfortably to her favorite daydream. It was the
one no one else knew about. In the daydream, she was
a teacher just like Miss Banneker, standing in front of a
classroom. Hattie wanted to be a teacher with all her heart.
But teacher’s college cost money, more than her family
could ever hope to make.
I’ll just have to work hard
, Hattie thought drowsily as her
thoughts began to float away. She was almost asleep when
