utcher's shop, studied the bakery, always wary of running into her charges and always the very proper teacher lady. I missed my gentle, laughing mother from home.
Mother's students who met her while she shopped seemed shocked that a teacher-lady would actually go marketing. I think they thought she must just evaporate after the schoolbell rang or maybe sat on a shelf in the library like an unread book waiting for the morning bell to bring her back to life. Sometimes they looked actually frightened when they saw her as if she would ask them to give her the answer to yesterday's quiz in front of their shopping mother or, even more frighteningly, share some earlier misdeed with their mom. They would turn bright red or start chattering like a frightened squirrel, for if they kept talking, maybe she would not talk at all.
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