“I don’t know, Pa,” she said in answer to his question. “It was harder than I expected, but I did the best I could.”
“No one can do better than that,” Pa assured her.
At home, Ma said that no doubt it would be all right. “Now don’t fret! Forget about it until you hear the results of the examinations.”
Ma’s advice was always good, but Laura repeated it to herself every day and almost every hour. She went to sleep telling herself: “Don’t worry,” and wake up thinking with dread: “The letter may come today.”
At school, Florence had no hope for either of them. “It was too hard,” she said. “I’m sure only a few of the oldest teachers passed it.”
A week went by, with no word. Laura hardly expected Almanzo to come that Sunday, for Royal was sick with the grippe. Almanzo did not come. There was no letter on Monday. There was no letter on Tuesday.
A warm wind had melted the snow to slush and the sun was shining, so on Wednesday Pa did not come for Laura. She and Carrie and Grace walked home. The letter was there; Pa had got it that morning.
“What does it say, Ma?” Laura cried as she dropped her coat and crossed the room to pick up the letter.
“Why, Laura!” Ma said in astonishment. “You know I’d no more look at another person’s letter than I’d steal.”
With shaking fingers Laura tore the envelope and took out a teacher’s certificate. It was a second-grade one. “It’s better than I expected,” she told Ma. “The most I hoped for was third grade. Now if I can only have the good luck to get the right school!”
“A body makes his own luck, be it good or bad,” Ma placidly said. “I have no doubt you will get as good as you deserve.”
Laura had no doubt that she would get as good a school as she could get, but she wondered how to make herself the good luck to get the one she wanted. She thought about little else that night, and she was still thinking about it next morning when Florence came into the schoolroom and came directly to her.
“Did you pass, Laura?” she asked.
“Yes, I got a second-grade certificate,” Laura answered.
“I didn’t get any, so I can’t teach our school,” Florence said soberly, “but this is what I want to tell you: You tried to help me, and I would rather you taught our school than anyone else. If you want it, my father says you may have it. It is a three months’ school, beginning the first of April, and it pays thirty dollars a month.”
Laura could hardly get the breath to answer, “Oh, yes! I do want it.”
“Father said, if you did, to come and see him and the board will sign the contract.”
“I will be there tomorrow afternoon,” Laura said. “Thank you, Florence, so much.”
“Well, you have always been so nice to me, I am glad of a chance to pay some of it back,” Florence told her. Laura remembered what Ma had said about luck, and she thought to herself: “I believe we make most of our luck without intending to.”
Chapter 27
School Days End
At the end of the last day of school in March, Laura gathered her books, and stacked them neatly on her slate. She looked around the schoolroom for the last time. She would never come back. Monday she would begin teaching the Wilkins school, and sometime next fall she and Almanzo would be married.
Carrie and Grace were waiting downstairs, but Laura lingered at her desk, feeling a strange sinking of heart. Ida and Mary Power and Florence would be here next week. Carrie and Grace would walk to school without her, always after this.
Except for Mr. Owen at his desk, the room was empty now. Laura must go. She picked up her books and went toward the door. At Mr. Owen’s desk she stopped and said, “I must tell you good-by, for I shall not be coming back.”
“I heard you were going to teach again,” Mr. Owen said. “We will miss you, but we will look for you back next fall.”
“That is what I want to tell you. This is good-by,” Laura repeated. “I am going to be married, so I won’t be coming back at all.”
Mr. Owen sprang up and walked nervously across the platform and back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Not sorry you are going to be married, but sorry I didn’t graduate you this spring. I held you back because I… because I had a foolish pride; I wanted to graduate the whole class together, and some weren’t ready. It was not fair to you. 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.”