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.”
“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