“Take care, dear girl, he’s a-fooling you!
Take care! Oh, take care!
Trust him not for he won’t prove true,
Beware! Oh, beware!”
“Hi, yi, yi, yi yipee-ee!” they yelled. But the ponies couldn’t go faster, they were going as fast as they could.
“I wouldn’t marry a farmer (Lena sang)
He’s always in the dirt,
I’d rather marry a railroad man
Who wears a striped shirt!
“Oh, a railroad man, a railroad man,
A railroad man for me!
I’m going to marry a railroad man,
A railroader’s bride I’ll be!”
“I guess I better breathe them,” she said. She pulled at the lines till she made the ponies trot, and then they slowed to a walk. Everything seemed quiet and slow.
“I wish I could drive,” Laura said. “I always wanted to, but Pa won’t let me.”
“You can drive a ways,” Lena offered generously.
Just then the ponies touched noses again, squealed, and ran.
“You can drive on the way home!” Lena promised. Singing and whooping, they went racing on across the prairie. Every time Lena slowed the ponies to get their breath, they got it and ran again. In no time at all, they reached the homesteader’s claim shanty.
It was a tiny room, boarded up-and-down, and its roof sloped all one way, so that it looked like half of a little house. It was not as big as the wheat stacks beyond it, where men were threshing wheat with a noisy, chaff-puffing machine. The homesteader’s wife came out to the buggy, lugging the basket of washing. Her face and arms and her bare feet were as brown as leather from the sun. Her hair straggled uncombed and her limp dress was faded and not clean.
“You must excuse the way I look,” she said. “My girl was married yesterday, and here come the threshers this morning, and this wash to do. I been hustling since before sun-up, and here the day’s work hardly started and my girl not here any more to help me.”
“Do you mean Lizzie got married?” Lena asked.
“Yes, Lizzie got married yesterday,” Lizzie’s mother said proudly. “Her Pa says thirteen’s pretty young, but she’s got her a good man and I say it’s better to settle down young. I was married young myself.”
Laura looked at Lena, and Lena looked at her. On the way back to camp they did not say anything for some time. Then both spoke at once.
“She was only a little older than I am,” said Laura, and Lena said, “I’m a year older than she was.”
They looked at each other again, an almost scared look. Then Lena tossed her curly black head. “She’s a silly! Now she can’t ever have any more good times.”
Laura said soberly, “No, she can’t play any more now.”
Even the ponies trotted gravely. After a while Lena said she supposed that Lizzie did not have to work any harder than before. “Anyway, now she’s doing her own work in her own house, and she’ll have babies.”
“Well,” Laura said, “I’d like my own house and I like babies, and I wouldn’t mind the work, but I don’t want to be so responsible. I’d rather let Ma be responsible for a long time yet.”
“And besides, I don’t want to settle down,” Lena said. “I’m not ever going to get married, or if I do, I’m going to marry a railroader and keep on moving west as long as I live.”
“May I drive now?” Laura asked. She wanted to forget about growing up.