These Happy Golden Years (Little House 8)

“He leans on the bit, with me,” Almanzo said. Abruptly he changed the subject, “Do you know your old schoolteacher, Clewett, is going to start a singing school?”

Laura had not heard this. Almanzo said, “I’d like to have you go with me, if you will.”

“I would like to, very much,” she answered.

“All right, next Friday night. I’ll come for you at seven.” Almanzo went on, “He’s got to learn to walk. He’s never been known to walk yet when he was hitched up. Seems to think that if he can keep on going fast enough he can get away from the buggy.”

“Let me take him again,” Laura said. She loved the feel of Barnum’s mouth coming to her hands through the lines. It was true that he did not pull so hard when she was driving him. “He is really gentle,” she said again, though she knew that he had always been a runaway.

All that afternoon she took turns with Almanzo, driving, and before he stopped to let her get out at home, he reminded her, “Friday night, at seven. I’ll be driving Barnum single, and he may act up, so be ready.”

Chapter 22

Singing School

School began next day in the new brick schoolhouse on Third Street in town. This was a two-story schoolhouse, with two teachers. The small children were in the downstairs room, and the older ones upstairs.

Laura and Carrie were in the upstairs room. It seemed strangely large and empty, without the small children. Yet almost all the seats were filled with boys and girls whom they did not know. Only a few back seats were empty, and these would be filled when the weather grew too cold for farm work and the big boys came to school.

At recess Ida and Laura stood at an upstairs window, looking down at the children playing outdoors, and talking with Mary Power and Minnie Johnson. Ida and Elmer were coming to the singing school Friday night, and so were Minnie and her brother, Arthur, and Mary Power with her new beau, Ed.

“I wonder why Nellie Oleson isn?

?t coming to school,” Laura wondered, and Ida said, “Oh, hadn’t you heard? She’s gone back to New York.”

“Not really!”

“Yes, she’s gone back there to stay with some relatives. You know what I bet, I bet she talks all the time about how wonderful it is in the west!” Ida laughed. They all laughed.

All alone among the empty seats one of the new girls was sitting by herself. She was very blonde, and tall and slender, and she looked unhappy. Suddenly Laura knew how she felt. They were all having such a good time, and there she sat, left out and lonely and shy, as Laura used to feel.

“That new girl looks nice, and she looks lonesome,” Laura said in a low voice. “I’m going to go talk to her.”

The new girl’s name was Florence Wilkins. Her father had a claim northwest of town, and she intended to be a schoolteacher. Laura had been sitting with her and talking only a little while, when the others came from the window and gathered around them. Florence was not coming to the singing school. She lived too far away.

On Friday evening, Laura was ready promptly at seven, in her brown poplin and her brown velvet hat, and promptly at seven Almanzo came. Barnum stopped, and Laura jumped into the buggy so quickly that Almanzo started him again before he had time to rear.

“That’s the first time,” Almanzo said. “He’s getting slower about rearing. Maybe sometime he’ll forget it.”

“Maybe.” Laura doubted it. She quoted, “‘May bees don’t fly in September.’”

Singing school was to be in the church, and as they came into town Almanzo said that they would better leave a little early, before the others came out, because a crowd around Barnum would excite him. Laura replied, “When you think it’s time, just leave, and I will come.”

Almanzo tied Barnum to one of the hitching posts, and they went into the lighted church. He had paid tuition for two, and bought a singing book. The class was already there, and Mr. Clewett was seating them. He placed the bass singers in a group, the tenors in another, and sopranos and altos in groups.

Then he taught them the names and values of the notes, the holds, the slurs, and the rests, and the bass, tenor, and treble clefs. After this, he allowed a short recess, and basses, altos, tenors, and sopranos all mixed together, talking and laughing, until Mr. Clewett called them to order again.

They practiced singing scales. Mr. Clewett gave the pitch with his tuning fork again and again. When almost all of them managed to sound very nearly the same note, they were off, up and down the scale, singing “Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do.” Exhausted from climbing so high, the voices all gladly came down again, “Do, si, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do!”

Up and down and up and down they sang, sometimes striking the notes and sometimes not, but always with good will. Laura had taken a place at the end of a seat, and she watched for a sign from Almanzo. When quietly he went to the door, she slipped away and followed.

While they hurried to the buggy he said, “I’ll help you in before I untie him. Likely he’ll rear as soon as he is untied, but not before if you don’t tighten the lines. Take a good hold on them, but don’t move them until he starts. I’ll try to get in before he comes down, but if I can’t make it, you must hold him. Let him run, but don’t let him run away. Drive him around the church and pass me again. Don’t be afraid, you can drive him. You have, you know.”

She had never driven him when he was starting, Laura thought, though she said nothing. Climbing quickly into the buggy, she took hold of the lines where they lay across the dashboard. She gripped them tightly but did not move them.

At the hitching post, Almanzo untied Barnum. The instant his head was free, Barnum reared. Up and up he went until he stood straight on his hind legs; he was down again and running before Laura could catch her breath. The buggy wheels left the ground and struck it with a jolt.

Laura held firmly to the lines. Barnum was racing away on the open prairie beyond the church. She pulled steadily harder with her right arm than with the left, and to her joy Barnum turned that way. He came swiftly around in a very neat circle. The church whirled in its center, and as its side turned toward her, Laura pulled with all her strength on both lines evenly. But Barnum did not stop. They flashed past Almanzo, still standing at the hitching post.