“Well, I do have to,” Laura replied. “But I can’t, till I’m sixteen. That’s the law, a teacher has to be sixteen years old.”
“I won’t be here then,” said Mary. Then suddenly they felt as if she were going away forever. The years ahead of the
m were empty and frightening.
“Oh, Laura, I never have been away from home before. I don’t know what I’ll do,” Mary confessed. She was trembling all over.
“It will be all right,” Laura told her stoutly. “Ma and Pa are going with you, and I know you can pass the examinations. Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared. I won’t be scared,” Mary insisted. “I’ll be lonesome. But that can’t be helped.”
“No,” Laura said. After a minute she cleared her throat and told Mary, “The sun has gone through the white clouds. It is a huge, pulsing ball of liquid fire. The clouds above it are scarlet and crimson and gold and purple, and the great sweeps of cloud over the whole sky are burning flames.”
“It seems to me I can feel their light on my face,” Mary said. “I wonder if the sky and the sunsets are different in Iowa?”
Laura did not know. They came slowly down the low hill. This was the end of their last walk together, or at least, their last walk for such a long time that it seemed forever.
“I am sure I can pass the examinations, because you helped me so much,” Mary said. “You went over every word of your lessons with me, until I do know everything in the school books. But Laura, what will you do? Pa is spending so much for me—the trunk, and a new coat, a new pair of shoes, the railroad fares, and all—it worries me. How can he ever manage school books and clothes for you and Carrie?”
“Never mind, Pa and Ma will manage,” said Laura. “You know they always do.”
Early next morning, even before Laura was dressed, Ma was scalding and plucking the blackbirds that Pa had killed. She fried them after breakfast, and as soon as they were cool she packed in a shoe box the lunch to take on the train.
Pa and Ma and Mary had bathed the night before. Now Mary put on her best old calico dress and her second-best shoes. Ma dressed in her summer challis, and Pa put on his Sunday suit. A neighbor boy had agreed to drive them to the depot. Pa and Ma would be gone a week, and when they came home without Mary they could walk from town.
The wagon came. The freckled boy, with red hair sticking through a rent in his straw hat, helped Pa load Mary’s trunk into the wagon. The sun was shining hot and the wind was blowing.
“Now, Carrie and Grace, be good girls and mind Laura,” Ma said. “Remember to keep the chickens’ water pan filled, Laura, and look out for hawks, and scald and sun the milk pans every day.”
“Yes, Ma,” they all answered.
“Good-by,” Mary said. “Good-by Laura. And Carrie. And Grace.”
“Good-by,” Laura and Carrie managed to say. Grace only stared round-eyed. Pa helped Mary to climb up the wagonwheel to sit with Ma and the boy on the wagon seat. He took his seat on the trunk.
“All right, let’s go,” he said to the boy. “Good-by, girls.”
The wagon started. Grace’s mouth opened wide and she bawled.
“For shame, Grace! For shame! a big girl like you, crying!” Laura choked out. Her throat was swelling so that it hurt. Carrie looked as though she might cry in a moment. “Shame on you!” Laura said again, and Grace gulped down a last sob.
Pa and Ma and Mary did not look back. They had to go. The wagon taking them away left silence behind it. Laura had never felt such a stillness. It was not the happy stillness of the prairie. She felt it in the very pit of her stomach.
“Come,” she said. “We’ll go into the house.”
That silence had settled into the house. It was so still that Laura felt she must whisper. Grace smothered a whimpering. They stood there in their own house and felt nothing around them but silence and emptiness. Mary was gone.
Grace began to cry again and two large tears stood in Carrie’s eyes. This would never do. Right now, and for a whole week, everything was in Laura’s charge, and Ma must be able to depend on her.
“Listen to me, Carrie and Grace,” she said briskly. “We are going to clean this house from top to bottom, and we’ll begin right now! So when Ma comes home, she’ll find the fall housecleaning done.”
There had never been such a busy time in all Laura’s life. The work was hard, too. She had not realized how heavy a quilt is, to lift soaked and dripping from a tub, and to wring out, and to hang on a line. She had not known how hard it would be, sometimes, never to be cross with Grace who was always trying to help and only making more work. It was amazing, too, how dirty they all got, while cleaning a house that had seemed quite clean. The harder they worked, the dirtier everything became.
The worst day of all was very hot. They had tugged and lugged the straw ticks outdoors, and emptied them and washed them, and when they were dry they had filled them with sweet fresh hay. They had got the bed springs off the bedsteads and leaned them against the walls, and Laura had jammed her finger. Now they were pulling the bedsteads apart. Laura jerked at one corner and Carrie jerked at the other. The corners came apart, and suddenly the headboard came down on Laura’s head so that she saw stars.
“Oh, Laura! did it hurt you?” Carrie cried.
“Well, not very much,” Laura said. She pushed the headboard against the wall, and it slid down softly and hit her anklebone. “Ouch!” she couldn’t help yelling. Then she added, “Let it lie there if it wants to!”