These Happy Golden Years (Little House 8)

“Not now,” she refused. “I don’t want you to see it, until I put it on with the dress.”

Next morning they were all up bright and early, to have time to get ready for church. It was a fresh, clear morning; the meadow larks were singing and the sunshine drinking the dew from the grass. All ready in her starched Sunday lawn and Sunday hair ribbons, Carrie sat carefully on her bed, to watch Laura dress.

“You do have beautiful hair, Laura,” she said.

“It isn’t golden, like Mary’s,” Laura answered. But in the sunshine as she brushed it, her hair was beautiful. It was fine, but very thick, and so long that the shimmering brown length of it, unbraided, fell below her knees. She brushed it back satin-smooth, and coiled and pinned the mass of braids. Then she took the curlers out of her bangs and carefully arranged the curly mass. She put on her knitted white-lace stockings, and buttoned her high, well-polished black shoes.

Then carefully over her under-petticoats she put on her hoops. She liked these new hoops. They were the very latest style in the east, and these were the first of the kind that Miss Bell had got. Instead of wires, there were wide tapes across the front, almost to her knees, holding the petticoats so that her dress would lie flat. These tapes held the wire bustle in place at the back, and it was an adjustable bustle. Short lengths of tape were fastened to either end of it; these could be buckled together underneath the bustle, to puff it out, either large or small. Or they could be buckled together in front, drawing the bustle down close in back, so that a dress rounded smoothly over it. Laura did not like a large bustle, so she buckled the tapes in front.

Then carefully over all she buttoned her best petticoat, and over all the starched petticoats she put on the underskirt of her new dress. It was of brown cambric, fitting smoothly around the top over the bustle, and gored to flare smoothly down over the hoops. At the bottom, just missing the floor, was a twelve-inch-wide flounce of the brown poplin, bound with an inch-wide band of plain brown silk. The poplin was not plain poplin, but striped with an openwork silk stripe.

Then over this underskirt and her starched white corset-cover, Laura put on the polonaise. Its smooth, long sleeves fitted her arms perfectly to the wrists, where a band of the plain silk ended them. The neck was high, with a smooth band of the plain silk around the throat. The polonaise fitted tightly and buttoned all down the front with small round buttons covered with the plain brown silk. Below the smooth hips it flared and rippled down and covered the top of the flounce on the under-skirt. A band of the plain silk finished the polonaise at the bottom.

Around the brown silk neckband Laura placed a blue ribbon two inches wide. She pinned it together at her throat with the pearl bar pin that Ma had given her. The ends of the ribbon fell in streamers to her waist.

Then, Laura unwrapped her hat. Carrie sighed with delight when she saw it.

It was a sage-green, rough straw, in poke-bonnet shape. It completely covered Laura’s head and framed her face with its flaring brim. It was lined with shirred silk, blue. Wide blue ribbons tied under her left ear and held the bonnet securely in place.

The blue of the lining, the blue ribbon bow, and the blue neck ribbon, exactly matched the blue of Laura’s eyes.

Pa and Ma and Grace were ready for church when she came out of the bedroom, with Carrie following her. Pa looked from the top of Laura’s head to the bottom of the brown poplin flounce, where the soft black toes of her shoes peeped out. Then he said, “They say that fine feathers make fine birds, but I say it took a fine bird to grow such feathers.”

Laura was so pleased that she could not speak.

“You look very nice,” Ma praised, “but remember that pretty is as pretty does.”

“Yes, Ma,” Laura said.

“That’s a funny hat,” said Grace.

“It isn’t a hat. It’s a poke bonnet,” Laura

explained to her.

Then Carrie said, “When I’m a young lady, I’m going to earn me a dress just exactly like that.”

“Likely you’ll have a prettier one,” Laura answered quickly, but she was startled. She had not thought that she was a young lady. Of course she was, with her hair done up and her skirts almost touching the ground. She was not sure she liked being a young lady.

“Come,” Pa said. “The team is waiting, and we’ll be late to church if we don’t hurry.”

The day was so pleasant and sunny that Laura hated to sit in the church, and Reverend Brown’s long sermon seemed even duller than usual. The wild prairie grass was green outside the open windows and the light wind enticed her as it softly brushed her cheek. It seemed that there should be more, in such a day, than going to church and going home again.

Ma and Carrie and Grace changed at once into their everyday dresses, but Laura did not want to. She asked, “May I keep my Sunday dress on, Ma? if I wear my big apron and am very careful?”

“You may if you want to,” Ma gave permission. “No reason that anything should happen to your dress if you take care.”

After dinner, and after the dishes were washed, Laura wandered restlessly out of the house. The sky was so blue, the floating piles of cloud were so shimmering and pearly, and far and wide the land was green. In a row around the house the young cottonwoods were growing; the little saplings that Pa had planted were twice as tall as Laura now, spreading their slender branches and rustling leaves. They made a flickering shade in which Laura stood, looking east and south and west at the lovely, empty day.

She looked toward town, and while she looked a buggy came dashing around the corner by Pearson’s livery barn and out along the road toward the Big Slough.

The buggy was new, for the sun flashed and sparkled from its wheels and top. The horses were brown and trotted evenly. Were they the colts that she had helped break? Surely, they were, and as they turned toward her and crossed the slough, she saw that Almanzo was driving them. They came trotting up, and the buggy stopped beside her.

“Would you like to go for a buggy ride?” Almanzo asked, and as Pa came out of the house Laura replied in the words she had always used.

“Oh yes! I’ll be ready in a minute.”

She tied on her poke bonnet, and told Ma that she was going for a buggy ride. Carrie’s eyes were shining, and she stopped Laura and stood tiptoe to whisper, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t change your dress?”