“We have until the middle of August,” said Laura. “But the roses won’t last that long.”
“‘Gather ye roses while ye may,’” Mary began, and she quoted the poem for Laura. Then as they walked on together in the rose-scented warm wind, she talked of her studies in literature. “I am planning to write a book some day,” she confided. Then she laughed. “But I planned to teach school, and you are doing that for me, so maybe you will write the book.”
“I, write a book?” Laura hooted. She said blithely, “I’m going to be an old maid schoolteacher, like Miss Wilder. Write your own book! What are you going to write about?”
But Mary was diverted from the subject of books. She inquired, “Where is that Wilder boy, that Ma wrote me about? It seems like he’d be around sometime.”
“I think he is too busy on his claim. Everybody is busy,” Laura answered. She did not mention seeing him in town. For some reason that she could not explain, she felt shy of talking about it. She and Mary turned and went rather quietly back to the house, bringing into it the fragrance of the roses they carried.
Swiftly that summer went by. Every weekday Laura walked to town in the early morning, carrying her lunch pail. Often Pa walked with her, for he was doing carpenter work on new buildings that newcomers were building. Laura could hear the hammers and saws while she sewed steadily all day long, pausing only to eat her cold lunch at noon. Then, often with Pa, she walked home again. Sometimes there was a pain between her shoulders from bending over her work, but that always disappeared during the walk, and then came the happy evening at home.
At supper she told of all she had seen and heard in Miss Bell’s shop, Pa told any news he had gathered, and they all talked of the happenings on the claim and in the house: how the crops were growing, how Ma was getting along with-Mary’s sewing, how many eggs Grace had found, and that the old speckled hen had stolen her nest and just came off with twenty chicks.
It was at the supper table that Ma reminded them that tomorrow was Fourth of July. “What are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t see that we can do anything, Caroline. No way that I know of, to prevent tomorrow’s being the Fourth,” Pa teased.
“Now, Charles,” Ma reproached him, smiling. “Are we going to the celebration?”
There was silence around the table.
“I cannot hear you when you all talk at once,” Ma teased in her turn. “If we are going, we must think about it tonight. I’ve been so enjoying having Mary here that I forgot about the Fourth, and nothing is prepared for a celebration.”
“My whole vacation is a celebration, and it seems to me enough,” Mary said quietly.
“I have been in town every day. It would be a treat to me to miss a day.” Then Laura added, “But there are Carrie and Grace.”
Pa laid down his knife and fork. “I’ll tell you what. Caroline, you and the girls cook a good dinner, I will go to town in the morning and get some candy and firecrackers. We will have our own Fourth of July celebration right here at home. What do you say to that?”
“Get lots of candy, Pa!” Grace begged, while Carrie urged, “And lots of firecrackers!”
Everyone had such a good time next day that they all agreed it was much more fun than going to town. Once or twice Laura wondered if Almanzo Wilder were in town with the brown horses, and the thought of Nellie Oleson just crossed her mind. But if Almanzo wanted to see her again, he knew where she was. It was not her place to do anything about it, and she didn’t intend to.
All too soon the summer was gone. In the last week of August Mary went back to college, leaving an emptiness in the house. Now Pa cut the oats and wheat with his old hand cradle, because the fields were still so small that they would not pay for having a harvester. When the corn was ripe he cut it and shocked it in the field. He was thin and tired from all the hard work he had done, in town and in the fields, and he was restless because people were settling the country so thickly.
“I would like to go west,” he told Ma one day. “A fellow doesn’t have room to breathe here any more.”
“Oh, Charles! No room, with all this great prairie around you?” Ma said. “I was so tired of being dragged from pillar to post, and I thought we were settled here.”
“Well, I guess we are, Caroline. Don’t fret. It’s just that my wandering foot gets to itching, I guess. Anyway I haven’t won that bet with Uncle Sam yet, and we stay right here till we win it! till I can prove up on this homestead claim.”
Laura knew how he felt for she saw the look in his blue eyes as he gazed over the rolling prairie westward from the open door where he stood. He must stay in a settled country for the sake of them all, just as she must teach school again, though she did so hate to be shut into a schoolroom.
Chapter 17
Breaking the Colts
October days had come, and the wild geese were flying south, when once more Pa loaded the furniture on the wagon and they all moved back to town. Other people were moving in from the country, and the seats in the schoolhouse were filling up.
Most of the big boys were not coming to school any more. Some had moved to the claims to stay. Ben Woodworth was working in the depot, Frank Harthorn was busy in the store, and Cap Garland was working with his team, hauling hay and coal or anything he was hired to move in town or country. Still there were not seats enough in the schoolhouse, for the country was full of newcomers whose children came to school. The smaller pupils were crowded three in a seat, and it was certain now that a larger schoolhouse must be built before next winter.
One day when Laura and Carrie came from school, they found company sitting with Ma in the front room. The man was a stranger, but Laura felt that she should know the young woman who looked at her soberly. Ma was smiling; she said nothing for a moment, while Laura and the woman looked at each other.
Then the woman smiled, and Laura knew her. She was Cousin Alice! Alice, who with Ella and Peter had come to spend Christmas in the log house in the Big Woods. Alice and Mary had been the big girls then; Ella had been Laura’s playmate. Now while Laura greeted Alice with a kiss, she asked, “Did Ella come, too?”
“No, she and her husband couldn’t come,” Alice said. “But here is a cousin you haven’t met yet, my husband, Arthur Whiting.”
Arthur was tall, with dark hair and eyes; he was pleasant and Laura liked him, but though he and Alice stayed a week, he always seemed to be a stranger. Alice was so much like Mary that she belonged in the family, and Laura and Carrie hurried home from school because Alice would be sitting in the sunny front room with Ma.
In the evenings they all popped corn and made taffy, listened to Pa’s fiddle, and endlessly talked of old times and of plans for the future.
Arthur’s brother, Lee, was Ella’s husband, and they had taken adjoining claims only forty miles away. Peter was coming out in the spring.
“It has been such a long time since we were together in the Big Woods, and now we are gathering out here on the prairie,” Alice said one evening.
“If only your mother and father would come,” Ma said wistfully.
“I think they will stay in eastern Minnesota,” Alice told her. “They only came that far, and there they seem contented.”
“It’s a queer thing,” said Pa. “People always moving west. Out here it is like the edge of a wave, when a river’s rising. They come and they go, back and forth, but all the time the bulk of them keep moving on west.”
Alice and Arthur stayed only a week. Early Saturday morning, well wrapped up, with heated flatirons at their feet and hot baked potatoes in their pockets, they set out on their forty-mile sleigh ride home. “Give my love to Ella,” Laura said, as she kissed Alice again for good-by.
It was wonderful sleighing weather, clear and colder than zero, with deep snow and no sign of a blizzard cloud. But this winter there were no more sleighing parties. Perhaps the boys were working their horses too hard all the week. Now and then Laura saw Almanzo and Cap at a distance; they were
breaking a pair of colts to drive and seemed to be having a busy time.
On Sunday afternoon Laura saw them passing several times. Sometimes Almanzo, and sometimes Cap, was braced in the cutter, holding with all his might to the reins, while the wild colts tried to break away and run. Pa looked up from his paper once and said, “One of those young fellows will break his neck yet. There’s not a man in town would tackle handling that team.”
Laura was writing a letter to Mary. She paused and thought how fortunate it was that during the Hard Winter, Almanzo and Cap had taken chances no one else would take, when they had gone after wheat for the starving people.
She had finished her letter and folded it, when someone knocked at the door. Laura opened it, and Cap Garland stood there. With his flashing grin that lighted his whole face, he asked, “Would you like a sleigh ride behind the colts?”
Laura’s heart sank. She liked Cap, but she did not want him to ask her to go sleigh riding, and all in an instant she thought of Mary Power and of Almanzo and she did not know what to say.
But Cap went on speaking. “Wilder asked me to ask you, because the colts won’t stand. He’ll be by here in a minute and pick you up, if you’d like to go.”
“Yes, I would!” Laura exclaimed. “I’ll be ready. Come in?”
“No thanks, I’ll tell him,” Cap replied.
Laura hurried, but the colts were pawing and prancing impatiently when she came. Almanzo was holding them with both hands, and said to her, “Sorry I can’t help you,” as she got herself into the cutter. As soon as she was seated, they dashed away down the street.
No one else was out driving, so the street was clear as the colts fought to break away from Almanzo’s grip on the lines. Far out on the road south of town they went racing.
Laura sat quietly watching their flying feet and laidback ears. This was fun. It reminded her of a time long ago when she and Cousin Lena let the black ponies run away across the prairie. The wind blew hard and cold on her face, and bits of snow pelted back onto the robes. Then the colts tossed their heads, pricked up their ears, and let Almanzo turn their frisky steps back toward town.
He looked at her curiously. “Do you know there isn’t a man in town except Cap Garland who will ride behind these colts?” he asked.
“Pa said so,” Laura replied.
“Then why did you come?” Almanzo wanted to know.
“Why, I thought you could drive them,” Laura said in surprise, and asked in her turn, “But why don’t you drive Prince and Lady?”
“I want to sell these colts, and they’ve got to be broken to drive first,” Almanzo explained.
Laura said no more as the colts tried again to run. They were headed toward home and wanted to get there quickly. It took all Almanzo’s attention and muscle to hold them to a fast and fighting trot. Main Street flashed by in a blur, and far out on the prairie to the north Almanzo quieted the colts and turned them again. Then Laura laughed, “If this is breaking them, I’m glad to help!”
They said little more until an hour had gone by and the winter sun was sinking. Then as Almanzo held the colts and Laura quickly slipped out of the cutter at Pa’s door, he said, “I’ll come for you Sunday.” The colts jumped and dashed away before Laura could reply.
“I am afraid to have you ride behind those horses,” Ma said as Laura came in.
Pa looked up from his paper. “Does seem like Wilder is trying to get you killed. But I’d say you are enjoying it the way your eyes are shining,” he added.
After this, Almanzo came on Sunday afternoons to take Laura for a sleigh ride. But he and Cap always drove the colts first, more than half the afternoon, to quiet them, and nothing that Laura could say would persuade Almanzo to let her ride before the colts were somewhat tired.
There was a Christmas tree that year at the new church. Laura and Carrie remembered a Christmas tree long ago in Minnesota, but Grace had never seen one. Laura thought the best part of that Christmas was seeing Grace’s delighted face when she looked at the Christmas tree with its lighted candles shining, the bright-colored mosquito-bar bags of candy and the presents hanging from its branches.
But while she was waiting for Grace’s Christmas doll to be brought to her from the tree, Laura was given a package which surprised her so much that she was sure there was some mistake. It was a small black leather case lined with blue silk. Against the lovely blue shone, all white, an ivory-backed hairbrush and comb. Laura looked again at the wrapping paper; her name was plainly written on it, in a handwriting she did not know.
“Whoever could have given me such a present, Ma?” she asked.
Then Pa leaned to admire it, too, and his eyes twinkled. “I could not swear who gave it to you, Laura,” he said. “But I can tell you one thing. I saw Almanzo Wilder buying that very case in Bradley’s drugstore,” and he smiled at Laura’s astonishment.
Chapter 18
The Perry School
The first March winds were blowing hard on a Thursday when Laura came home from school. She was breathless, not only from struggling with the wind, but from the news she brought. Before she could tell it, Pa spoke.
“Could you be ready to move to the claim this week, Caroline?”
“This week?” said Ma in surprise.
“The school district’s going to put up a schoolhouse on Perry’s claim, just south of our south line,” Pa said. “All the neighbors will help build it, but they want to hire me to boss the job. We ought to be moved out before I begin, and if we go this week, there’ll be plenty of time to finish the schoolhouse before the first of April.”
“We can go any day you say, Charles,” Ma answered.
“Day after tomorrow, then,” said Pa. “And there is something else. Perry says their school board would like to have Laura teach the school. How about it, Laura? You will have to get a new certificate.”
“Oh, I would like to have a school so near home,” said Laura. Then she told her news. “Teachers’ examinations are tomorrow. Mr. Owen announced them today. They will be at the schoolhouse, so there’s no school tomorrow. I do hope I can get a second-grade certificate.”
“I am sure you can,” Carrie encouraged her stoutly. “You always know your lessons.”
Laura was a little doubtful. “I have no time to review and study. If I pass, I have to do it on what I know now.”
“That is the best way, Laura,” Ma told her. “If you tried to study in a hurry you would only be confused. If you get a second grade we will all be glad, and if it is only third grade we will be glad of that.”
“I will try my best,” was all that Laura could promise. Next morning she set out alone, and nervously, to the teachers’ examinations at the schoolhouse. The room seemed strange, with only a few strangers sitting here and there among empty seats, and Mr. Williams at the desk instead of Mr. Owen.
The lists of questions were already written on the blackboard. All morning there was silence, except for the scratching of pens and small rustles of paper. Mr. Williams gathered the papers at the end of every hour, whether they were finished or not, and graded them at his desk.
Laura finished each of her papers in good time, and that afternoon, with a smile, Mr. Williams handed her a certificate. His smile told her, even before she quickly saw the words he had written on it, “Second Grade.”
She walked home, but really she was dancing, running, laughing and shouting with jubilation. Quietly she handed the certificate to Ma, and saw Ma’s smile light her whole face.
“I told you so! I told you you would get it,” Carrie gloated.
“I was sure you would pass,” Ma praised her, “if you didn’t get bothered by your first public examination among strangers.”
“Now I will tell you the rest of the good news,” Pa smiled. “I thought I’d save it as a reward, for after the examination. Perry says the school board will pay you twenty-five dollars a month for a three months’ school, April, May, and June.”
Laura was nearly speechless. �
�Oh!” she exclaimed. Then, “I didn’t expect… Why! Why, Pa… that will be a little more than a dollar a day.”
Grace’s blue eyes were perfectly round. In solemn awe she said, “Laura will be rich.”
They all burst out laughing so merrily that Grace had to join in, without knowing why. When they were sober again, Pa said, “Now we’ll move out to the claim and build that schoolhouse.”
So during the last weeks of March, Laura and Carrie walked to school again from the claim. The weather was spring-like in spite of March winds, and every evening when they came home they saw that more work had been done on the little schoolhouse that was rising from the prairie a little way to the south.
In the last days of March, the Perry boys painted it white. There never had been a prettier, small schoolhouse.
It stood snowy white on the green land, and its rows of windows shone brightly in the morning sunshine as Laura walked toward it across the short, new grass.
Little Clyde Perry, seven years old, was playing by the doorstep where his First Reader had been carefully laid. He put the key of the new door into Laura’s hand and said solemnly, “My father sent you this.”
Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining. The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh. Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard. Before it stood the teacher’s desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.
Before this desk stood three rows of new, boughten seats. Their smooth honey-colored finish matched the teacher’s desk. The ends of the outside rows were tight against the walls; between them there was space for the third row and the two aisles. There were four seats in each row.
Laura stood a moment in the doorway, looking at that fresh, bright expensive room. Then going to her desk, she set her dinner pail on the floor beneath it and hung her sunbonnet on a nail in the wall.
These Happy Golden Years Page 10