These Happy Golden Years (21 page)

I'm sorry."

“It doesn't matter,” Laura said. “I am glad to know I could have graduated.”

Then they shook hands, and Mr. Owen said good-by and wished her good fortune in all her undertakings.

As Laura went down the stairs she thought: “The last time always seems sad, but it isn't really. The end of one thing is only the beginning of another.”

After Sunday night supper at home, Almanzo and Laura drove through town and northwest toward the Wilkins claim. It was three and a half miles from town, and Barnum walked. The twilight deepened into night.

Stars came out in the vastness of the sky and the prairie stretched dim and mysterious far away. The buggy 237

wheels turned softly on the grassy road.

In the stillness Laura began to sing:

"The stars are rolling in the sky, The earth rolls on below,

And we can feel the rattling wheel

Revolving as we go;

Then tread away my gallant boys,

And make the axle fly!

Why should not wheels go round-about, Like planets in the sky?"

Almanzo laughed aloud. “Your songs are like your father's! They always fit.”

“That is from the 'Old Song of the Treadmill,'” Laura told him. “But it did seem to fit the stars and buggy wheels.”

“There's only one word wrong in it,” Almanzo agreed.

“No buggy wheels of mine will ever rattle. I keep 'em tight and greased. But never mind. When the wheels rol around in this direction for three months more, you will be through teaching school, for good!”

“I suppose you mean, for better or worse,” Laura said demurely. “But it better be for good.”

“It will be,” Almanzo said.

The new schoolhouse stood on a corner of Mr.

Wilkins' claim, only a little way from his house.

When Laura opened its door on Monday morning, she saw that it was an exact replica of the Perry schoolhouse, even to the dictionary on the desk, and the nail in the wall for her sunbonnet.

This was a happy omen, she thought; and it was. All her days in that school were pleasant. She felt herself a capable teacher now, and she dealt so well with every little difficulty that none ever lasted until the next day.

Her pupils were friendly and obedient, and the little ones were often funny, though she kept her smiles unseen.

She boarded at the Wilkinses', and they were all friendly to Laura and pleasant to each other. Florence 239

still went to school and at night told Laura all the day's happenings. Laura shared Florence's room, and they spent the evenings cosily there with their books.

On the last Friday in April, Mr. Wilkins paid Laura twenty-two dollars, her first month's salary, less two dollars a week for her board. Almanzo drove her home that evening, and next day she went with Ma to town to buy materials. They bought bleached muslin for underwear, chemises and drawers, petticoats and nightgowns; two of each. “These, with what you have, should be plenty,”

said Ma. They bought stronger, bleached muslin, for two pairs of sheets and two pairs of pillow cases.

For Laura's summer dress they bought ten yards of delicate pink lawn with small flowers and pale green leaves scattered over it. Then they went to Miss Bell's to find a hat to go with the dress.

There were several beautiful hats, but Laura knew at once which one she wanted. It was a fine, cream-colored straw with a narrow brim, rolled narrower at the sides.

The brim in front came down over the middle of Laura's forehead. Around the crown was a band of satin ribbon a little darker than the straw, and three ostrich tips stood straight up at the crown's left side. They were shaded in color, from the light cream of the straw to slightly darker than the satin ribbon. The hat was held on the head by a fine, white silk elastic cord that scarcely showed because it fitted under the mass of Laura's braided hair.

As they walked up the street after they had bought that hat, Laura begged Ma to take five dollars and spend it for herself.

“No, Laura,” Ma refused. “You are a good girl to think of it, but there is nothing that I need.”

So they came to the wagon, waiting for them in front of Fuller's hardware store. Something bulky stood in the wagon box, covered with a horse blanket. Laura wondered what it was, but she had no time to look, for Pa untied the horses quickly and they all started home.

“What have you got in back, Charles?” Ma asked.

“I can't show you now, Caroline. Wait until we get home,” Pa answered.

At home he stopped the wagon close to the house door. “Now, girls,” he said, “take your own packages in, but leave mine alone until I get back from putting up the horses. Don't you peek under the blanket either!”

He unhitched the horses and hurried them away.

“Now whatever can that be?” Ma said to Laura. They waited. As soon as possible, Pa came hurrying back. He lifted the blanket away, and there stood a shining new sewing machine.

“Oh, Charles!” Ma gasped.

“Yes, Caroline, it is yours,” Pa said proudly. “There'll be a lot of extra sewing, with Mary coming home and Laura going away, and I thought you'd need some help.”

“But how could you?” Ma asked, touching the shiny black iron of the machine's legs.

“I had to sell a cow anyway, Caroline; there wouldn't be room in the stable next winter unless I did,” Pa explained. “Now if you will help me unload this thing, we will take its cover off and see how it looks.”

A long time ago, Laura remembered, a tone in Ma's voice when she spoke of a sewing machine had made Laura think that she wanted one. Pa had remembered that.

He took the endgate out of the wagon, and he and Ma and Laura lifted the sewing machine carefully down and carried it into the sitting room, while Carrie and Grace hovered around excitedly. Then Pa lifted the box-cover of the machine and they stood in silent admiration.

“It is beautiful,” Ma said at last, “and what a help it wil be. I can hardly wait to use it.” But this was late on Saturday afternoon. The sewing machine must stand still over Sunday.

Next week Ma studied the instruction book and learned to run the machine, and the next Saturday she and Laura began to work on the lawn dress. The lawn was so crisp and fresh, the colors so dainty, that Laura was afraid to cut it lest she make a mistake, but Ma had made so many dresses that she did not hesitate. She took Laura's measurements; then, with her dressmaker chart, she made the pattern for the waist, and fearlessly cut the lawn.

They made the waist tight-fitting, with two clusters of tucks down the back, and two in front. Down the center of the front, between the tucks, tiny, white pearl buttons buttoned the waist. The collar was a straight, upstanding fold of the lawn; the sleeves were long, gathered at the shoulders and close-fitting to the waist, finished with a hem the width of the tucks.

The skirt was gathered very full all round into a narrow waistband, which buttoned over the bottom of the waist to secure them from slipping apart. All down the 243

full skirt, tucks went around and around it, spaced evenly a little way apart, and beneath the bottom tuck was a full-gathered ruffle four inches wide that just touched Laura's shoe tips.

This dress was finished when Almanzo brought Laura home on the last Friday in May.

“Oh! it is pretty, Ma!” Laura said when she saw it.

“All those tucks are so even, and stitched so beautifully.”

“I declare,” said Ma, “I don't know how we ever got along without that sewing machine. It does the work so easily; tucking is no trouble at all. And such beautiful stitching. The best of seamstresses could not possibly equal it by hand.”

Laura was silent a moment, looking at her new, machine-stitched dress. Then she said, “Mr. Wilkins paid me another month's salary today, and I really don't need it. I have fifteen dollars left of my April pay. I will need a new dress for next fall...”

“Yes, and you will need a nice wedding dress,” Ma in-terrupted.

“Fifteen dollars ought to buy the two,” Laura considered. “They, with the clothes I have, will be enough for a long time. Besides, I will have another twenty-two dollars next month. I wish you and Pa would take this fifteen dollars. Please, Ma. Use it to pay for Mary's visit home, or to buy the clothes she needs.”

"We can manage without taking the money for your 244

last term of school," Ma said quietly.

“I know you can, but there are so many things for you and Pa to manage. I would like to help again just this once. Then I would feel all right about going away and not helping any more, and having all these nice clothes for myself,” Laura urged.

Ma yielded. “If it will please you to do so, give the money to your Pa. Since he spent the cow money for the sewing machine, he will be glad to have it, I know.”

Pa was surprised and objected that Laura would need the money herself. But when she explained and urged again, he took it gladly. “It will help me out of a pinch,”

he admitted. "But this is the last one. From now on I think we will have clear sailing. The town is growing so fast that I am going to have plenty of carpenter work.

The cattle are growing fast, too. Beats all how they mul-tiply, and they live off the homestead, and next year I win my bet with Uncle Sam and this homestead will be ours. So you need never worry about helping any more, Half-Pint. You have done your share and then some."

When she drove away with Almanzo that Sunday evening, Laura's heart was brimming with contentment.

But it seemed that always there must be some wish un-satisfied. Now she regretted that she would miss Mary's coming home. Mary was coming that week, and Laura would be teaching a class in fractions in Wilkins school when Mary came.

On Friday afternoon, Almanzo drove Prince and Lady, 245

and they trotted fast all the way home. As they came near the door of home, Laura heard the music of the organ. Before Almanzo stopped the horses she was out of the buggy and running into the house.

“See you Sunday,” he called after her, and she fluttered her ringed hand in answer. Then she was giving Mary a big hug before she could get up from the organ stool, and the first thing Mary said was, “Oh, Laura! I was so surprised to find the organ waiting here for me.”

“We had to keep the secret a long time,” Laura answered. “But it didn't spoil by keeping, did it? Oh, Mary, let me look at you. How well you're looking!”

Mary was even more beautiful than ever. Laura would never grow tired of looking at her. And now there was so much to tell each other that they talked every moment.

Sunday afternoon they walked once more to the top of the low hill beyond the stable, and Laura picked wild roses to fill Mary's arms.

“Laura,” Mary asked soberly, “do you really want to leave home to marry that Wilder boy?”

Laura was serious, too. “He isn't that Wilder boy any more, Mary. He is Almanzo. You don't know anything about him, do you? or not much since the Hard Winter.”

“I remember his going after the wheat, of course. But why do you want to leave home and go with him?” Mary persisted.

“I guess it's because we just seem to belong together,”

Laura said. "Besides, I have practically left home any-246

way; I am away so much. I won't be any further away than I am at Wilkins."

“Oh, well, I guess it has to be that way. I went away to college, and now you're going away. That's growing up, I suppose.”

“It's strange to think,” Laura said. “Carrie and Grace are older now than we used to be. They are growing up, too. Yet it would be even stranger if we stayed as we were for always, wouldn't it?”

“There he is coming now,” said Mary. She had heard the buggy and Prince's and Lady's hoofs, and no one could have guessed that she was blind, to see her beautiful blue eyes turned toward them as if she saw them.

“I've hardly seen you,” she said. “And now you have to go.”

“Not till after supper. I'll be back next Friday, and besides, we'll have all July and most of August together,”

Laura reminded her.

At four o'clock on the last Friday in June, Almanzo drove Barnum and Skip up to the Wilkinses' door to take Laura home. As they drove along the familiar road, he said, “And so another school is finished, the last one.”

“Are you sure?” Laura replied demurely.

“Aren't we?” he asked. “You will be frying my breakfast pancakes sometime along the last of September.”

“Or maybe a little later,” Laura promised. He had already begun to build the house on the tree claim.

"In the meantime, how about the Fourth of July? Do 247

you want to go to the celebration?"

“I'd much rather go for a drive,” Laura answered.

“Suits me!” he agreed. “This team's getting too frisky again. I've been working on the house and they've had a few days' rest. It's time we took the ginger out of them on some more of those long drives.”

“Any time! I'm free now.” Laura was gay. She felt like a bird out of a cage.

“We'll have the first long drive on the Fourth, then,”

said Almanzo.

So on the Fourth, soon after dinner, Laura put on her new lawn dress for the first time, and for the first time she wore the cream-colored hat with the shaded ostrich tips. She was ready when Almanzo came.

Barnum and Skip stood for her to get into the buggy, but they were nervous and in a hurry to go. “The crowd excited them, coming through town,” Almanzo said. “We will only go to the end of Main Street, where you can see the flags, then we will go south, away from the noise.”

The road south toward Brewster's was so changed that it hardly seemed to be the same road that they had traveled so many times to Laura's first school. New claim shanties and some houses were scattered over the prairie, and there were many fields of growing grain.

Cattle and horses were feeding along the way.

Instead of being white with blowing snow, the prairie was many shades of soft green, but the wind still blew. It came from the south and was warm; it blew the wild 248

grass and the grain in the fields; it blew the horses'

manes and tails streaming behind them; it blew the fringes of the lap robe that was tucked in tightly to protect Laura's delicate lawn dress. And it blew the lovely, cream-colored ostrich feathers off Laura's hat.