For the Good of the Cause Read Online Free PDF Page B

right there… Excuse me.”

    “… He really scored a great goal-with his back to the goal post and over the head, from the penalty line-right under the crossbar.”
    “… This can’t be your hat! That style went out ages ago. The hats they’re wearing now look like flower pots upside down.”
    “… Marianna Kazimirovna, can I bother you for a moment? …”
    “… I’m hoping to get part of the basement for a rifle range. I’ve already told the boys.”
    “… I’m not leaving, Grigori Lavrentyevich. I’ll be outside, on the stairs…”

Chapter 2
    “Now who wanted to see me? Hello! How are you? It’s so good to see all of you!”
    “Congratulations, ma’am!”
    “And congratulations to you.” Lidia raised her hand and waved to them. “You’ve really earned it! Good for you and welcome back! In our new building!”
    “Hooray!!!”
    “Who’s that over there trying so hard to keep out of my sight? Lina? You’ve cut your hair! Why? It was so lovely.”
    “Nobody wears long hair any more.”
    “The things you girls will do just to be in style.”

    Lidia, wearing a blue-green tailored suit and black blouse, looked neat and trim. She had a friendly, open face. Standing on the landing outside the teachers’ room, she studied the young people crowding around her from the narrow passage and staircase. Usually there wasn’t much light here, but on this sunny day there was enough to see the details of the students’ clothes. There were scarves, kerchiefs, blouses, dresses, and cowboy shirts of every color and shade-white, yellow, pink, red, blue, green, and brown-dots and designs, stripes and checks, and plain solid colors.
    The girls and the boys tried not to stand too close to each other. Pressed together in their own group, they rested their chins on the shoulders of those in front, craning their necks so as to see better. They all had happy, shining faces, and there was a buzz of excitement as they looked expectantly at Lidia.
    She looked around and noticed that most of the girls had changed their hair styles during the summer. There were still a few who had old-fashioned braids tied with colored ribbons, and a few with simple center parts or not quite so simple curls brushed to one side. But most of them had those seemingly uncared for, casual, untidy, but by no means artless hairdos, from pure blond to jet black. And the boys—the short and the tall, the fat and the thin—all wore gaudy, open-necked shirts. Some had their hair brushed forward, others wore it carefully brushed back or had crew cuts.
    None of the very young students were here. But even the oldest were not yet beyond that tender, impressionable age at which the best in them could be brought out. Their faces mirrored that special eagerness.
    The minute Lidia came out of the room, she was overwhelmed by those trusting eyes and smiles. It was the supreme reward of the teacher: students crowding around you eagerly like this.
    They could not have said what it was they saw in her. It was just that, being young, they responded to everything genuine. You only had to take one look at her to know that she meant what she said. And they had gotten to know and like her even more during those months on the building site when she came, not dressed up, but in working clothes and a kerchief. She had never tried to order them around. She would never have asked anyone to do something she would not do herself. She had scrubbed, raked, and carried things together with the girls.
    And although she was nearly thirty and married and had a two-year-old daughter, all the students called her Lidia, though not to her face, and the boys were only too proud to run errands for her. She always accompanied her instructions with a slight but commanding gesture, sometimes—and this was a sign of great trust—with a light tap on the shoulder.
    “When are we going to move, Lidia Georgievna?”
    “Yes, when?”
    “Come now, we’ve waited so long, surely we can