Good friends Judy Merchant of Lebanon, N.H., and Ruth Hodgkins of Lovell sat way in back in the Little Red Schoolhouse on Wednesday morning.

Unlike other days at Fryeburg Fair this week, the two women were not answering questions from visitors.

On this day, third-grade students sat quietly at their desks — eyes forward, hands folded, backs straight. Girls with bonnets and pigtails, boys with neatly combed hair and tucked-in shirts.

At the front of the classroom stood Michael Pratt, their teacher. Stern faced, he called upon the students, one by one, to rise from their seats, come to the front of the room, and read from their readers.

They had been instructed to address him as “sir.”

And they did.

“Mr. Pratt’s pretending to be mean, but he’s really very nice — he’s trying to play the part,” whispered Katie Malia, who accompanied the third-graders to the old schoolhouse at the fairgrounds. Katie’s son, Patrick, and his classmates attend the C.A. Snow School in Fryeburg.

This is the third year in a row Pratt has involved his students in a make-believe trip to the 1800s. Merchant and Hodgkins consider it one of the highlights of their week at the fair.

Built in 1835, the school was called the Toll Bridge School because it sat next to an old toll bridge on Route 5. Used for more than 100 years, until 1938, the building sat vacant for many years until it was donated to the fair museum in 1990 by Marion Barker Hobbs. The building was moved the same year, refurbished and dedicated in 1991.

Merchant and Hodgkins enjoy the questions that both children and adults ask, but they especially enjoy hearing older visitors talk about their own experiences going to one-room schoolhouses.

“One guy walked in the door, pointed to the dunce’s chair in the corner, and said, ‘That’s my seat right there,’” said Merchant, who recently moved from Fryeburg.

Men tend to fess up to a lot of youthful indiscretions, the women said. One man said he used to throw bullets in the wood stove, while another said he once stuffed a rag in the chimney so smoke would build up and they could go outside and play.

“We get to talk to some wonderful people — and listen,” Merchant said.

After the children finished their lessons Wednesday, the plan was to take them next door to Loretta’s Kitchen to get fresh baked cookies and watch apple cider being made.

The classroom still has the old wavy glass in the windows, slate blackboards, kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling, a wood stove that keeps the chill off, a switch stick used for discipline, a 48-star American flag, and old maps on rollers that pull down.

In the back of the room are cupboards that contain old selectmen’s notebooks describing the costs of materials bought for the school. In the entryway are iron coat hooks and a sink.

“One man who went to this school said he remembers walking to the nearest farmhouse to get water,” Merchant said.

No water meant, of course, no toilets. The original outhouse is long gone, but two replicas have been added (both two-holers).

Hodgkins said middle school girls react pretty strongly to the idea of sitting next to someone to carry out such a private function. “Oh, gross,” is the typical comment.

Across the doorways of both outhouses are signs that say “Not In Use.” Small children who can’t read, however, have been known to walk underneath the chain and climb up on the bench.

“At least once a year, we get a kid who tries to use it,” Hodgkins said.