Pa answered, “Gilbert made it to Preston and back. He’s brought the mail!”
It was as if Christmas had happened unexpectedly. Ma hoped for the church paper. Laura and Mary and Carrie hoped that Reverend Alden had sent them something to read; sometimes he did. Grace was excited because they were excited. It was hard to wait for Pa to come back from the post office.
He was gone a long time. As Ma said, it did no good to be impatient. Every man in town was at the post office and Pa must wait his turn.
When at last he came, his hands were full. Ma reached eagerly for the church papers and Laura and Carrie both tried to take the bundle of Youths Companions. There were newspapers too.
“Here! Here!” Pa laughed. “Don’t mob a fellow! And that’s not the whole of it. Guess what I got!”
“A letter? Oh Pa, did you get a letter?” Laura cried.
“Who is it from?” Ma asked.
“You’ve got the Advances, Caroline,” Pa replied.
“And Laura and Carrie’ve got the Youths Companions. I’ve got the Inter-Ocean and the Pioneer Press. Mary gets the letter.”
Mary’s face shone. She felt the letter’s size and thickness. “A big, fat letter! Please read it, Ma.”
So Ma opened the letter and read it aloud.
The letter was from Reverend Alden. He was sorry that he had not been able to come back and help organize a church last spring, but he had been sent farther north. He hoped to be with them when spring came again. The children of the Sunday School in Minnesota were sending a bundle of Youths Companions to the girls, and would send another bundle next year. His church had shipped them a Christmas barrel and he hoped the clothing would fit. As his own Christmas gift and some slight return for their hospitality to him and to Reverend Stuart last winter at Silver Lake, he had put in a Christmas turkey. He wished them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
There was a little silence when Ma had finished reading. Then she said, “We have this good letter, anyway.”
“Gilbert brought word that they’re putting on a double work crew and two snowplows at the Tracy cut,” Pa told them. “We may get the barrel by Christmas.”
“It’s only a few days,” Ma said.
“A lot can be done in a few days,” said Pa. “If this spell of clear weather holds out, no reason they can’t get the train through.”
“Oh, I hope the Christmas barrel comes,” Carrie said.
“The hotels have shut down,” Pa told Ma the news. “They’ve been burning lumber and now Banker Ruth has bought out the lumberyard, down to the last shingle.”
“We couldn’t afford to burn lumber anyway,” said Ma. “But Charles, we are almost out of coal.”
“We’ll burn hay,” Pa answered cheerfully.
“Hay?” Ma said, and Laura asked, “How can we burn hay, Pa?”
She thought of how quickly the prairie fires swept through dry grass. Flame licks through the light, thin stems and is gone before the frail ashes can fall. How could a room be kept warm by a fire so quic
kly burning out, when even the steady glow of hard coal could not keep out the cold?
“We will have to contrive,” Pa told her. “We’ll manage it! Needs must, when the devil drives.”
“Likely the train will get through in time,” Ma said.
Pa put on his cap again and asked Ma to make dinner a little late. He had time to haul another load of hay if he hustled. He went out and Ma said, “Come, girls, put the bundle of Youths Companions away. We must get out the washing while the weather’s clear so we can.”
All that day Laura and Carrie and Mary looked forward to the Youths Companions and often they spoke of them. But the bright day was short. They stirred and punched the clothes boiling on the stove; they lifted them on the broom handle into the tub where Ma soaped and rubbed them. Laura rinsed them, Carrie stirred the blueing bag in the second rinsewater until it was blue enough. Laura made the boiled starch. And when for the last time Ma went out into the cold to hang the freezing wash on the line, Pa had come for dinner.
Then they washed the dishes, they scrubbed the floor and blacked the stove, and washed the inside of the windowpanes. Ma brought in the frozen-dry clothes and they sorted them and sprinkled them and rolled them tightly, ready for ironing.
Twilight had come. It was too late to read that day and after supper there was no lamplight because they must save the last of the kerosene.
“Work comes before pleasure,” Ma always said. She smiled her gentle smile for Laura and Carrie and said now, “My girls have helped me do a good day’s work,” and they were rewarded.