Saturday afternoon they dressed for town and walked the two miles to Manchester to meet Mr. McKee and walk home with him. He stayed until Sunday afternoon when they all walked to town again and Mr. McKee took the train back to De Smet and his work. Then Mrs. McKee and Laura and Mattie walked back to the claim for another week.
They were glad when Saturday came, but in a way it was a relief when Mr. McKee was gone, for he was such a strict Presbyterian that on Sunday no one was allowed to laugh or even smile. They could only read the Bible and the catechism and talk gravely of religious subjects. Still, Laura liked him, for he was truly good and kind and never said a cross word.
This was the pattern of the weeks that passed, one after another, all alike, until April and May were gone.
The weather had grown warmer, and on the walks to town they heard the meadow larks singing beside the road where spring flowers bloomed. One warm Sunday afternoon the walk back from Manchester seemed longer than usual and tiring, and as they lagged a little along the way Mrs. McKee said, “It would be pleasanter for you to be riding in Wilder’s buggy.”
“I likely won’t do that any more,” Laura remarked. “Someone else will be in my place before I go back.” She thought of Nellie Oleson. The Olesons’ claim, she knew, was not far from Almanzo’s.
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. McKee told her. “An old bachelor doesn’t pay so much attention to a girl unless he’s serious. You will marry him yet.”
“Oh, no!” Laura said. “No, indeed I won’t! I wouldn’t leave home to marry anybody.”
Then suddenly she realized that she was homesick. She wanted to be at home again, so badly that she could hardly bear it. All that week she fought against her longing, hiding it from Mrs. McKee, and on Saturday when they walked again to Manchester there was a letter waiting for her.
Ma had written that Mary was coming home, and Laura must come if Mrs. McKee could find anyone else to stay with her. Ma hoped she could do so, for Laura must be at home when Mary was there.
She dreaded to speak of it to Mrs. McKee, so she said nothing until at the supper table Mrs. McKee asked what was troubling her. Then Laura told what Ma had written.
“Why, of course you must go home,” Mr. McKee said at once. “I will find someone to stay here.”
Mrs. McKee was quiet for a time before she said, “I don’t want anyone but Laura to live with us. I would rather stay by ourselves. We are used to the place now, and nothing ever happens. Laura shall go home and Mattie and I will be all right alone.”
So Mr. McKee carried Laura’s satchel on the Sunday afternoon walk to Manchester, and she said good-by to Mrs. McKee and Mattie and got on the train with him, going home.
All the way she thought of them, standing lonely at the station, and walking the two miles back to the lonely shanty where they must stay, doing nothing but eating and sleeping and listening to the wind, for five months more. It was a hard way to earn a homestead, but there was no other way, for that was the law.
Chapter 15
Mary Comes Home
Laura was so glad to be at home again, out on Pa’s claim. It was good to milk the cow, and to drink all she wanted of milk, and to spread butter on her bread, and eat again of Ma’s good cottage cheese. There were lettuce leaves to be picked in the garden, too, and little red radishes. She had not realized that she was so hungry for these good things to eat. Mrs. McKee and Mattie could not get them, of course, while they were holding down their claim.
At home now there were eggs, too, for Ma’s flock was doing well. Laura helped Carrie hunt for nests that the hens hid in the hay at the stable and in the tall grass nearby.
Grace found a nest of kittens hidden in the manger. They were grandchildren of the little kitten that Pa had bought for fifty cents, and Kitty felt her responsibility. She thought that she should hunt for them as well as for her own kittens. She brought in more gophers than all of them could eat, and every day she piled the extra ones by the house door for Ma.
“I declare,” Ma said, “I never was so embarrassed by a cat’s generosity.”
The day came when Mary was coming home. Pa and Ma drove to town to fetch her, and even the train seemed special that afternoon as it came at last, unrolling its black smoke into a melting line low on the sky. From the rise of ground behind the stable and the garden, they saw the white steam puff up from its engine and heard its whistle; its far rumbling was still, and they knew that it had stopped in town and that Mary must be there now.
What excitement there was when at last the wagon came up from the slough, with Mary sitting on the seat between Pa and Ma. Laura and Carrie both talked at once and Mary tried to talk to both at the same time. Grace was in everyone’s way, her hair flying and her blue eyes wide. Kitty went out through the doorway like a streak, with her tail swelled to a big brush. Kitty did not like strangers, and she had forgotten Mary.
“Weren’t you afraid to come all by yourself on the cars?” Carrie asked.
“Oh, no,” Mary smiled. “I had no trouble. We like to do things by ourselves, at college. It is part of our education.”
She did seem much more sure of herself, and she moved easily around the house, instead of sitting quiet in her chair. Pa brought in her trunk, and she went to it, knelt down and unlocked and opened it quite as if she saw it. Then she took from it, one after another, the presents she had brought.
For Ma there was a lamp mat of woven braid, with a fringe all around it of many-colored beads strung on stout thread.
“It is beautiful,” Ma said in delight.
Laura’s gift was a bracelet of blue and white beads strung on thread and woven together, and Carrie’s was a ring of pink and white beads interwoven.
“Oh, how pretty! how pretty!” Carrie exclaimed. “And it fits, too; it fits perfectly!”
For Grace there was a little doll’s chair, of red and green beads strung on wire. Grace was so overcome as she took it carefully into her hands that she could hardly say thank you to Mary.
“This is for you, Pa,” Mary said, as she gave him a blue silk handkerchief. “I didn’t make this, but I chose it myself. Blanche and I… Blanche is my roommate. We went downtown to find something for you. She can see colors if they are bright, but the clerk didn’t know it. We thought it would be fun to mystify him, so Blanche signaled the colors to me, and he thought we could tell them by touch. I knew by the feeling that it was good silk. My, we did fool that clerk!” and, remembering, Mary laughed.
Mary had often smiled, but it was a long time since they had heard her laugh out, as she used to when she was a little girl. All that it had cost to send Mary to college was more than repaid by seeing her so gay and confident.
“I’ll bet this was the prettiest handkerchief in Vinton, Iowa!” Pa said.
“I don’t see how you put the right colors into your beadwork,” Laura said, turning the bracelet on her wrist. “Every little bead in this lovely bracelet is right. You can’t do that by fooling a clerk.”
“Some seeing person puts the different colors in separate boxes,” Mary explained. “Then we only have to remember where they are.”
“You can do that easily,” Laura agreed. “You always could remember things. You know I never could say as many Bible verses as you.”
“It surprises my Sunday School teacher now, how many of them I know,” said Mary. “Knowing them was a great help to me, Ma. I could read them so easily with my fingers in raised print and in Braille, that I learned how to read everything sooner than anyone else in my class.”
“I am glad to know that, Mary,” was all that Ma said, and her smile trembled, but she looked happier than when Mary had given her the beautiful lamp mat.
“Here is my Braille slate,” said Mary, lifting it from her trunk. It was an oblong of thin steel in a steel frame, as large as a school slate, with a narrow steel band across it. The band was cut into several rows of open squares, and it would slide up and down, or could be fastened in place at any point. Tied to the frame
by a string was a pencil-shaped piece of steel that Mary said was a stylus.
“How do you use it?” Pa wanted to know.
“Watch and I’ll show you,” said Mary.
They all watched while she laid a sheet of thick, cream-colored paper on the slate, under the slide. She moved the slide to the top of the frame and secured it there. Then with the point of the stylus she pressed, rapidly, here and there in the corners of the open squares.
“There,” she said, slipping the paper out and turning it over. Wherever the stylus had pressed, there was a tiny bump, that could easily be felt with the fingers. The bumps made different patterns, the size of the squares, and these were the Braille letters.
“I am writing to Blanche to tell her that I am safely home,” said Mary. “I must write to my teacher, too.” She turned the paper over, put it in the frame again, and slipped the slide down, ready to go on writing on the blank space. “I will finish them later.”
“It is wonderful that you can write to your friends and they can read your letters,” said Ma. “I can hardly believe that you are really getting the college education that we always wanted you to have.”
Laura was so happy that she felt like crying, too.
“Well, well,” Pa broke in. “Here we stand talking, when Mary must be hungry and it’s chore time. Let’s do our work now, and we will have longer to talk afterward.”
“You are right, Charles,” Ma quickly agreed. “Supper will be ready by the time you are ready for it.”
While Pa took care of the horses, Laura hurried to do the milking and Carrie made a quick fire to bake the biscuit that Ma was mixing.
Supper was ready when Pa came from the stable and Laura had strained the milk.
It was a happy family, all together again, as they ate of the browned hashed potatoes, poached fresh eggs and delicious biscuit with Ma’s good butter. Pa and Ma drank their fragrant tea, but Mary drank milk with the other girls. “It is a treat,” she said. “We don’t have such good milk at college.”
There was so much to ask and tell that almost nothing was fully said, but tomorrow would be another long day with Mary. And it was like old times again, when Laura and Mary went to sleep as they used to, in their bed where Laura for so long had been sleeping alone.
“It’s warm weather,” Mary said, “so I won’t be putting my cold feet on you as I used to do.”
“I’m so glad you’re here that I wouldn’t complain,” Laura answered. “It would be a pleasure.”
Chapter 16
Summer Days
It was such a joy to have Mary at home that the summer days were not long enough for all their pleasures. Listening to Mary’s stories of her life in college, reading aloud to her, planning and sewing to put her clothes in order, and once more going with her for long walks in the late afternoon, made the time go by too swiftly.
One Saturday morning Laura went to town to match Mary’s last winter’s best dress in silk, to make a new collar and cuffs. She found just what she wanted in a new milliner’s and dressmaker’s shop, and while Miss Bell was wrapping the little package she said to Laura, “I hear you’re a good sewer. I wish you would come and help me. I’ll pay you fifty cents a day, from seven o’clock to five, if you’ll bring your dinner.”
Laura looked around the pleasant, new place, with the pretty hats in two windows, bolts of ribbon in a glass showcase, and silks and velvets on the shelves behind it. There was a sewing machine, with an unfinished dress lying across it, and another lay on a chair nearby.
“You can see there is more work here than I can do,” Miss Bell said in her quiet voice. Miss Bell was a young woman and Laura thought her handsome with her tall figure and dark hair and eyes.
Laura decided that it would be pleasant to work with her.
“I will come if Ma is willing I should,” she promised.
“Come Monday morning if you can,” said Miss Bell.
Laura left the shop and went up the street to the post office to mail a letter for Mary. There she met Mary Power, who was on her way to do an errand at the lumberyard. They had not seen each other since the buggy ride in early spring, and there was so much to talk about that Mary begged Laura to come with her.
“All right, I will,” said Laura. “I’d like to ask Mr. McKee how Mrs. McKee and Mattie are getting along, anyway.”
They walked slowly, talking all the way up the street, across the cindery railroad tracks and the dusty street to the corner of the lumberyard, and there they stood talking.
A yoke of oxen was coming slowly into town on the country road from the north, hauling a lumber wagon. A man walked beside the farther ox and Laura idly watched him as he swung a long whip. The oxen trudged along until nearly to the corner, then started ahead quickly.
Laura and Mary stepped back. The man commanded, “Whoa! Haw!” But the oxen did not turn left. They swung to the right, around the corner.
“Gee, then! Go where you’re a mind to!” the driver ordered them, impatiently, but joking. Then he looked at the girls, and they exclaimed together, “Almanzo Wilder!”
He raised his hat with a cheerful flourish to them, and hurried along the street with the oxen.
“I didn’t know him without his horses!” Laura laughed.
“And the way he was dressed,” Mary disparaged him. “In those rough clothes and ugly heavy shoes.”
“He is likely breaking sod, and that is why he had oxen. He wouldn’t work Prince and Lady so hard,” Laura explained, more to herself than to Mary Power.
“Everybody is working,” Mary remarked. “Nobody can have any fun in the summertime. But Nellie Oleson is going to ride behind those horses yet, if she possibly can. You know the Olesons’ claim is a little way east of the Wilder boys’ claims.”
“Have you seen her lately?” Laura asked.
“I never see anybody,” Mary answered. “All the girls are out on their fathers’ claims, and Cap is teaming every day. Ben Woodworth is working at the depot, and nobody can get a word with Frank Harthorn nowadays, he works all the time in the store since his father has made him a partner. Minnie and Arthur are out with their folks on their homestead, and here I haven’t seen you since early April.”
“Never mind, we’ll see each other all next winter. Besides, I am coming to town to work if Ma says I may,” and Laura told Mary that she expected to sew for Miss Bell.
Suddenly she saw that the sun was almost overhead. She stopped only a moment in the lumberyard office, to hear from Mr. McKee that Mrs. McKee and Mattie were getting along all right, though they still missed her, Then quickly she said good-by to Mary and hurried away on her walk home. She had stayed in town too long. Though she walked so fast that she was almost running, dinner was ready when she reached home.
“I am sorry I stayed so long, but so many things happened,” she made excuse.
“Yes?” Ma inquired, and Carrie asked, “What happened?”
Laura told of meeting Mary Power and of seeing Mr. McKee. “I visited too long with Mary Power,” she confessed. “The time went so quickly that I did not know it was so late.” Then she told the rest. “Miss Bell wants me to work for her in her shop. May I, Ma?”
“Why, Laura, I declare I don’t know,” Ma exclaimed. “You have only just got home.”
“She will pay me fifty cents a day, from seven o’clock to five, if I bring my own dinner,” Laura told them.
“That is fair enough,” said Pa. “You take your own dinner, but you get off an hour early.”
“But you came home to be with Mary,” Ma objected.
“I know, Ma, but I will see her every night and morning and all day Sunday,” Laura argued. “I don’t know why, but I feel I ought to be earning something.”
“That is the way it is, once you begin to earn,” Pa said.
“I will be earning three dollars a week,” said Laura. “And seeing Mary, too. We will have lots of time to do things together, won’t we, Mary?”
“Yes, and I will d
o all your housework while you’re gone,” Mary offered. “Then on Sundays we’ll have our walks.”
“That reminds me, the new church is done,” said Pa. “We must all go to church tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be so glad to see the new church! I can hardly believe there is one!” Mary said.
“It’s there sure enough,” Pa assured her. “We’ll see for ourselves tomorrow.”
“And the next day?” Laura asked.
“Yes, you may go to work for Miss Bell. You can try it for a while anyway,” Ma said.
Sunday morning Pa hitched the horses to the wagon and they all rode to church. It was large and new, with long seats that were comfortable to sit in. Mary liked it very much, after the small chapel at college, but she knew hardly anyone there. On the way home she said, “There were so many strangers.”
“They come and they go,” Pa told her. “No sooner do I get acquainted with a newcomer than he sells the relinquishment of his claim and goes on west, or else his family can’t stand it here and he sells out and moves back east. The few that stick are so busy that we don’t have time to know each other.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “I will soon be going back to college, and I know everyone there.”
After the Sunday dinner, when the work was done, Carrie sat down to read the Youth’s Companion, Grace went to play with the kittens in the clean grass near the door, Ma rested in her rocking chair by the open window, and Pa lay down for his Sunday nap. Then Laura said, “Come, Mary, let’s go for our walk.”
They walked across the prairie to the south, and all along their way the wild June roses were blooming. Laura gathered them until she filled Mary’s arm with all she could hold.
“Oh, how sweet!” Mary kept saying. “I have missed the spring violets, but nothing is sweeter than prairie roses. It is so good to be home again, Laura. Even if I can’t stay long.”