On The Banks Of Plum Creek (16 page)

“I'm sorry, Laura,” Ma said that night. "I wouldn't have given your doll away if I'd known you care so much. But we must not think only of ourselves. Think how happy you've made Anna."

Next morning Mr. Nelson came driving up with a load of Pa's wood that he had cut. He worked all day, chopping wood for Ma, and the woodpile was big again.

“You see how good Mr. Nelson is to us,”

said Ma. “The Nelsons are real good neighbors. Now aren't you glad you gave Anna your doll?”

“No, Ma,” said Laura. Her heart was crying all the time for Pa and for Charlotte.

Cold rains fell again, and froze. No more letters came from Pa. Ma thought he must have started to come home. In the night Laura listened to the wind and wondered where Pa was. Often in the mornings the woodpile was full of driven snow, and still Pa did not come.

Every Saturday afternoon Laura put on her stockings and shoes, wrapped herself in Ma's big shawl, and went to the Nelsons'.

She knocked and asked if Mr. Nelson had got a letter for Ma. She would not go in, she did not want to see Charlotte there. Mrs. Nelson said that no letter had come, and Laura thanked her and went home.

One stormy day she caught sight of something in the Nelsons' barnyard. She stood still and looked. It was Charlotte, drowned and frozen in a puddle. Anna had thrown Charlotte away.

Laura could hardly go to the door. She could hardly speak to Mrs. Nelson. Mrs. Nelson said the weather was so bad that Mr. Nelson had not gone to town, but he would surely go next week. Laura said, “Thank you, ma'am,”

and turned away.

Sleety rain was beating down on Charlotte.

Anna had scalped her. Charlotte's beautiful wavy hair was ripped loose, and her smiling yarn mouth was torn and bleeding red on her cheek. One shoe-button eye was gone. But she was Charlotte.

Laura snatched her up and hid her under the shawl. She ran panting against the angry wind and the sleet, all the way home. Ma started up, frightened, when she saw Laura.

“What is it! What is it? Tell me!” Ma said.

“Mr. Nelson didn't go to town,” Laura answered. “But, oh, Ma—look.”

“What on earth?” said Ma.

“It's Charlotte,” Laura said. "I—I stole her.

I don't care, Ma, I don't care if I did!"

“There, there, don't be so excited,” said Ma.

“Come here and tell me all about it,” and she drew Laura down on her lap in the rocking-chair.

They decided that it had not been wrong for Laura to take back Charlotte. It had been a terrible experience for Charlotte, but Laura had rescued her and Ma promised to make her as good as new.

Ma ripped off the torn hair and the bits of her mouth and her remaining eye and her face.

They thawed Charlotte and wrung her out, and Ma washed her thoroughly clean and starched and ironed her while Laura chose from the scrap-bag a new, pale pink face for her and new button eyes.

That night when Laura went to bed she laid Charlotte in her box. Charlotte was clean and crisp, her red mouth smiled, her eyes shone black, and she had golden-brown yarn hair braided in two wee braids and tied with blue yarn bows.

Laura went to sleep cuddled against Mary under the patchwork comforters. The wind was howling and sleety rain beat on the roof.

It was so cold that Laura and Mary pulled the comforters over their heads.

A terrific crash woke them. They were scared in the dark under the comforters. Then they heard a loud voice downstairs. It said: “I declare! I dropped that armful of wood, didn't I?”

Ma was laughing, “You did that on purpose, Charles, to wake up the girls.”

Laura flew screaming out of bed and screaming down the ladder. She jumped into Pa's arms, and so did Mary. Then what a racket of talking, laughing, jumping up and down!

Pa's blue eyes twinkled. His hair stood straight up. He was wearing new, whole boots.

He had walked two hundred miles from eastern Minnesota. He had walked from town in the night, in the storm. Now he was here!

“For shame, girls, in your nightgowns!” said Ma. “Go dress yourselves. Breakfast is almost ready.”

They dressed faster than ever before. They tumbled down the ladder and hugged Pa, and washed their hands and faces and hugged Pa, and smoothed their hair and hugged him. Jack waggled in circles and Carrie pounded the table with her spoon and sang, “Pa's come home! Pa's come home!”

At last they were all at the table. Pa said he had been too busy, toward the last, to write.

He said, “They kept us humping on that thresher from before dawn till after dark. And when I could start home, I didn't stop to write. I didn't bring any presents, either, but I've got money to buy them.”

“The best present you could bring us, Charles, was coming home,” Ma told him.

After breakfast Pa went to see the stock.

They all went with him and Jack stayed close at his heels. Pa was pleased that Sam and David and Spot looked so well. He said he couldn't have taken better care of everything, himself. Ma told him that Mary and Laura had been a great help to her.

“Gosh!” Pa said. “It's good to be home.”

Then he asked, “What's the matter with your feet, Laura?”

She had forgotten her feet. She could walk without limping when she remembered to.

She said, “My shoes hurt, Pa.”

In the house, Pa sat down and took Carrie on his knee. Then he reached down and felt of Laura's shoes.

“Ouch! My toes are tight!” Laura exclaimed.

“I should say they are!” said Pa. "Your feet have grown since last winter. How are yours, Mary?"

Mary said her toes were tight, too.

“Take off your shoes, Mary,” said Pa. “And Laura, you put them on.”

Mary's shoes did not pinch Laura's feet.

They were good shoes, without one rip or hole in them.

“They will look almost like new when I have greased them well,” said Pa. “Mary must have new shoes. Laura can wear Mary's, and Laura's shoes can wait for Carrie to grow to them. It won't take her long. Now what else is lacking, Caroline? Think what we need, and we'll get what we can of it. Just as soon as I can hitch up we're all going to town!”

How they hurried and scurried then!

They dressed in their winter best, bundled up in coats and shawls, and climbed into the wagon. The sun shone bright and the frosty air nipped their noses. Sleet sparkled on the frozen-hard ground.

Pa was on the wagon seat, with Ma and Carrie snug beside him. Laura and Mary wrapped their shawls around each other and snuggled together on their blanket in the bottom of the wagon. Jack sat on the doorstep and watched them go; he knew they would come back soon.

Even Sam and David seemed to know that everything was all right, now that Pa was home again. They trotted gaily, till Pa said, “Whoa!” and hitched them to the hitching-posts in front of Mr. Fitch's store.

First, Pa paid Mr. Fitch part of the money he owed Mr. Fitch for the boards that built the house. Then, he paid for the flour and sugar that Mr. Nelson had brought to Ma while Pa was gone. Next, Pa counted the money that was left, and he and Ma bought Mary's shoes.

The shoes were so new and shining on Mary's feet that Laura felt it was not fair that Mary was the oldest. Mary's old shoes would always fit Laura, and Laura would never have new shoes. Then Ma said, “Now, a dress for Laura.”

Laura hurried to Ma at the counter. Mr.

Fitch was taking down bolts of beautiful woollen cloth.

The winter before, Ma had let out every tuck and seam in Laura's winter dress. This winter it was very short, and there were holes in the sleeves where Laura's elbows had gone through them because they were so tight. Ma had patched them neatly, and the patches did not show, but in that dress Laura felt skimpy and patched. Still, she had not dreamed of a whole new dress.

They looked at it, and Nellie asked, “Don't you wish you had a fur cape, Laura? But your Pa couldn't buy you one. Your Pa's not a store-keeper.”

Laura dared not slap Nellie. She was so angry that she could not speak. She did turn her back, and Nellie went away laughing.

Ma was buying warm cloth to make a cloak for Carrie. Pa was buying navy beans and flour and cornmeal and salt and sugar and tea. Then he must get the kerosene-can filled, and stop at the post-office. It was after noon, and growing colder, before they left town, so Pa hurried Sam and David and they trotted swiftly all the way home.

After the dinner dishes were washed and put away, Ma opened the bundles and they all enjoyed looking their fill at the pretty dress-goods.

“I'll make your dresses as quickly as I can, girls,” said Ma. “Because now that Pa is home we'll all be going to Sunday school again.”

“Where's that gray challis you got for yourself, Caroline?” Pa asked her. Ma flushed pink and her head bowed while Pa looked at her.

“You mean to say you didn't get it?” he said.

Ma flashed at him, "What about that new overcoat for yourself, Charles?"

Pa looked uncomfortable. “I know, Caroline,” he said. “But there won't be any crops next year when those grasshopper eggs hatch, and it's a long time till I can maybe get some work, next harvest. My old coat is good enough.”

“That's just what I thought,” said Ma, smiling at him.

After supper, when night and lamplight came, Pa took his fiddle out of the box and tuned it lovingly.

“I have missed this,” he said, looking around at them all. Then he began to play. He played “When Johnnie Comes Marching Home.” He played “The sweet little girl, the pretty little girl, the girl I left behind me!” He played and sang “My Old Kentucky Home”

and “Swanee River.” Then he played and they all sang with him,

'"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

That was another mild winter without much snow. It was still grasshopper weather. But chill winds blew, the sky was gray, and the best place for little girls was in the cosy house.

Pa was gone outdoors all day. He hauled logs and chopped them into wood for the stove. He followed frozen Plum Creek far upstream where nobody lived, and set traps along the banks for muskrat and otter and mink.

Every morning Laura and Mary studied their books and worked sums on the slate.

Every afternoon Ma heard their lessons. She said they were good little scholars, and she was sure that when they went to school again they would find they had kept up with their classes.

Every Sunday they went to Sunday school.

Laura saw Nellie Oleson showing off her fur cape. She remembered what Nellie had said about Pa, and she burned hot inside. She knew that hot feeling was wicked. She knew she must forgive Nellie, or she would never be an angel. She thought hard about the pictures of beautiful angels in the big paper-covered Bible at home. But they wore long white nightgowns. Not one of them wore a fur cape.

One happy Sunday was the Sunday when the Reverend Alden came from eastern Minnesota to preach in this western church. He preached for a long time, while Laura looked at his soft blue eyes and watched his beard wagging. She hoped he would speak to her after church. And he did.

“Here are my little country girls, Mary and Laura!” he said. He remembered their names.

Laura was wearing her new dress that day.

The skirt was long enough, and the sleeves were long, too. They made her coat sleeves look shorter than ever, but the red braid on the cuffs was pretty.

“What a pretty new dress, Laura!” the Reverend Alden said.

Laura almost forgave Nellie Oleson that day.

Then came Sundays when the Reverend Alden stayed at his own far church and in Sunday school Nellie Oleson turned up her nose at Laura and flounced her shoulders under the fur cape. Hot wickedness boiled up in Laura again.

One afternoon Ma said there would be no lessons, because they must all get ready to go to town that night. Laura and Mary were astonished.

“But we never go to town at night!” Mary said.

“There must always be a first time,” said Ma.

“But why must there be,Ma ? ” Laura asked.

“Why are we going to town at night?”

“It's a surprise,” said Ma. “Now, no more questions. We must all take baths, and be our very nicest.”

In the middle of the week, Ma brought in the washtub and heated water for Mary's bath. Then again for Laura's bath, and again for Carrie's. There had never been such scrubbing and scampering, such a changing to fresh drawers and petticoats, such brushing of shoes and braiding of hair and tying on of hair ribbons. There had never been such a wondering.

Supper was early. After supper, Pa bathed in the bedroom. Laura and Mary put on their new dresses. They knew better than to ask any more questions, but they wondered and whispered together.

The wagon box was full of clean hay. Pa put Mary and Laura in it and wrapped blankets around them. He climbed to the seat beside Ma and drove away toward town.

The stars were small and frosty in the dark sky. The horses' feet clippety-clopped and the wagon rattled over the hard ground.

Pa heard something else. “Whoa!” he said, pulling up the reins. Sam and David stopped.

There was nothing but vast, dark coldness and stillness pricked by the stars. Then the stillness blossomed into the loveliest sound.

Two clear notes sounded, and sounded again and again.

No one moved. Only Sam and David tin-kled their bits together and breathed. Those two notes went on, full and loud, soft and low.

They seemed to be the stars singing.

Too soon Ma murmured, “We'd better be getting on, Charles,” and the wagon rattled on. Still through its rattling Laura could hear those swaying notes.

“Oh, Pa, what is it?” she asked, and Pa said,

“It's the new churchbell, Laura.”

It was for this that Pa had worn his old patched boots.

The town seemed asleep. The stores were dark as Pa drove past them. Then Laura exclaimed, “Oh, look at the church! How pretty the church is!”