A McKettrick Christmas Read Online Free PDF

I’m almost twenty. I’d like to start a family of my own.”
    “While continuing to teach?”
    “Of course,” Lizzie said. “I know what you think—that I’ll have to choose one or the other. But I don’t have to choose.”
    “Because you’re a McKettrick?”
    Again, Lizzie’s cheeks warmed. “Yes,” she said, quite tartly. “Because I’m a McKettrick.” She huffed out a frustrated breath. “And because I’m strong and smart and I can do more than one thing well. No one would think of asking you when you’d give up being a doctor and start keeping house and mending stockings, if you decided to get married, would they?”
    “That’s different, Lizzie.”
    “No, it isn’t.”
    He settled back against the seat, closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to like Indian Rock,” he said. And then he went to sleep, leaving Lizzie even more confounded than before.
     
    “I have to use the chamber pot,” a small voice whispered, startling Lizzie out of a restless doze. “And I can’t find one.”
    Opening her eyes, Lizzie turned her head and saw the little Halifax girl standing in the aisle beside her. The last of the lanterns had gone out, and the car was frigid, but the blizzard had stopped, and a strangely beautiful bluish light seemed to rise from the glittering snow. Everyone else seemed to be asleep.
    Recalling the spittoon she’d seen at the back of the car, Lizzie stood and took the child’s chilly hand. “This way,” she whispered.
    The business completed, the little girl righted her calico skirts and said solemnly, “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome,” Lizzie replied softly. She could have used a chamber pot herself, right about then, but she wasn’t about to use the spittoon. She escorted the child back to her seat, tucked part of Mr. Brennan’s quilt around her.
    “We have to get home,” the little girl said, her eyes big in the gloom. “St. Nicholas won’t be able to find us out here in the wilderness, and Papa promised me I’d get a doll this year because I’ve been so good. When Mama had to tie a string to my tooth to pull it, I didn’t even cry.” She hooked a finger into one corner of her small mouth to show Lizzie the gap. “Schee?” she asked.
    Lizzie’s heart swelled into her throat. She looked with proper awe upon the vacant spot between two other teeth, shook her head. Wanting to gather the child into her arms and hold her tightly, she restrained herself. Children were skittish creatures. “I think I would have cried, if I had one of my teeth pulled,” she said seriously. She’d actually seen that particular extraction process several times, back on the ranch—it was a brutal business but tried and true. And usually quick.
    “My papa works on the Triple M now,” the little girl went on proudly. “He just got hired, and he’s foreman, too. That means we get our own house to live in. It has a fireplace and a real floor, and Mama says we can hang up Papa’s socks, if he has any clean ones, he’s been batching so long, and St. Nicholas will put an orange in the toe. One for me, and one for Jack, and one for Nellie Anne.”
    Lizzie nodded, still choked up, but smiling gamely. “Your brother is Jack,” she said, marking the names in her memory by repeating them aloud, “and the baby is Nellie Anne. What, then, is your name?”
    The small shoulders straightened. “Ellen Margaret Halifax.”
    Lizzie put out a hand in belated introduction. “Since I’ll be your teacher, you should probably call me Miss McKettrick,” she said.
    “Ellen,” Mrs. Halifax called, in a sleepy whisper, “you’ll freeze standing there in the aisle. Come get back under the quilt.”
    Ellen obeyed readily, and soon gave herself up to dreams. From the slight smile resting on her mouth, Lizzie suspected the child’s imagination had carried her home to the foreman’s house on the Triple M, where she was hanging up a much-darned stocking in anticipation of a rare treat—an