Eleven o'clock and 4,064

Amelia’s smile touches only the corners of her mouth. Betsy is one of the newest, and by far the most sensitive, of the cottage girls. Amelia had spent the better part of the fall drawing Betsy out of the protective shell she had been so deeply nestled in. Then had followed a month of silent tears when all the hurts of life seemed to leak continuously from the young one’s eyes. Finally Betsy seemed ready to participate in their regular Sunday activity. The girls knew not to call it a game, not on Sunday especially. Instead it was a memory verse activity. Amelia leans over Betsy’s small frame to read the page Betsy has open. “Hmmm,” she says thoughtfully, stalling for time while she thinks of a gentle way to redirect Betsy. Since the beginning of the year, it had been all Amelia could do to coax Betsy even to sit in the room. With a great deal of prayer and encouragement, Amelia had finally got Betsy to simply sit next to her while the rest of the girls participated. Knowing the least bit of discouragement now could very well set Betsy back, Amelia crouches next to the young girl. She keeps one arm curled around the high back of Betsy’s chair. “Genesis,” she says softly. “Did you start here?” Her fingers twitched with the desire to stroke the tawny, tightly braided hair, but she keeps her hand still. Sometimes Betsy welcomes such touches, but sometimes she flinches from unexpected contact.

Betsy nods, “I started at the beginning.” Her tone makes it evident that this was, to her, the obvious place to start. “But everyone already knows ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ I want something new and different. I want something the others will like.”

This side of Betsy always confused Amelia. Even now, the girl would barely speak above a whisper, and she was far to shy and withdrawn to make friends with any of the other, tougher, girls. Yet Betsy lived in perpetual desire for the other girls to like her, a desire she had kept well hidden from everyone for the many months since her arrival last August. Amelia herself had only guessed at this strange, incongruent aspect of Betsy a few weeks ago. “What do you like?” she gently prompts.

As usual, Betsy’s pale blue eyes turn to her teacher full of questions and with worry already beginning to crease her forehead. Betsy only answered questions like that when she could make a reasonable guess as to what the other expected or hoped to hear. Mumbling and nearly inaudible, she answers, “I don’t know….”

“Well,” Amelia says quickly, trying to salvage the fragile situation, “tell me what you’ve read. Not all of it, of course, there’s far too much for that. Just tell me one or two things that you remember.”

When this produces only a silent shaking of the head, Amelia tries again. “ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. What things in heaven and earth did God make?”

As close as she is, Amelia still has to lean closer, and nearly misses the whispered answer when it comes. “The sun,” breathes Betsy.

Amelia smiles, “We could use a little more of that today, couldn’t we? What else did God make?”

“All the birds that fly in the air,” comes the soft response.

“Very good,” Amelia beams, “what else?”

“Man,” says Betsy. A frown flickers so quickly on the girl’s face Amelia isn’t sure it had been there at all. “God made man. And Eve. God said it wasn’t good for the man to be alone.”

“That’s true,” Amelia agrees softly, her earlier pensiveness threatening to descend again. “God did say that. No one,” she adds slowly, “wants to be lonely. It is one thing to be alone, but it is something else to be lonely.”

Amelia falls silent as the truth of this statement speaks to both Betsy and to herself as well.

“Miss Hall?” the hesitant question brings her eyes from the page where they had drifted back to the adolescent beside her. “Should I use that verse then?”

Here, it is Amelia who hesitates. How comfortable would Betsy be if the word the others were trying to guess was ‘man’? “You could use help meet,” she whispers. “No one will guess that.”

Immediately Betsy shakes her head. Amelia realizes her mistake. Of course, Betsy, who only speaks when absolutely necessary and then only says what she hopes will pleases could never pick a word that no one would guess. And before she can back pedal, Betsy is asking, “Is it all right if I just sit by you?”

“Of course, dear,” Amelia answers in the only way she can. She tries to tell herself that at least Betsy had worked up the courage to decline a suggestion teacher made. Surely that counted for some progress.

Now though, it is Amelia’s turn to bite her lip in thought. Should she let Betsy use Amelia’s word and Amelia’s verse? But no, the other girls already envied some of the extra attention they perceived Betsy receiving. There was no need to risk alienating Betsy from them by what they would only think was undue favoritism.

Amelia uses the chair back to steady herself as she rises to her feet and stretches her back and legs from the strain of crouching so long beside Betsy’s chair. “Are we ready, ladies?” she asks by way of calling the room to order. Amelia settles herself back in her chair by the drafty window, and waits for Betsy to shift herself to a footstool near teacher. Though she knows the answer, she asks the girls, “Whose turn is it to go first this week?”