Little Town on the Prairie (Little House 7)

“By jingo, that plow can handle the work by itself,” he said. “With all these new inventions nowadays, there’s no use for a man’s muscle. One of these nights that plow’ll take a notion to keep on going, and we’ll look out in the morning and see that it’s turned over an acre or two after the team and I quit for the night.”

The strips of sod lay bottom-side-up over the furrows, with all the cut-off grass roots showing speckled in the earth. The fresh furrow was delightfully cool and soft to bare feet, and often Carrie and Grace followed behind the plow, playing. Laura would have liked to, but she was going on fifteen years old now, too old to play in the fresh, clean-smelling dirt. Besides, in the afternoons Mary must go for a walk to get some sunshine.

So when the morning’s work was done, Laura took Mary walking over the prairie. Spring flowers were blossoming and cloud-shadows were trailing over the grassy slopes.

It was odd that when they were little, Mary had been the older and often bossy, but now that they were older they seemed to be the same age. They liked the long walks together in the wind and sunshine, picking violets and buttercups and eating sheep sorrel. The sheep sorrel’s lovely curled lavender blossoms, the clover-shaped leaves and thin stems had a tangy taste.

“Sheep sorrel tastes like springtime,” Laura said.

“It really tastes a little like lemon flavoring, Laura,” Mary gently corrected her. Before she ate sheep sorrel she always asked, “Did you look carefully? You’re sure there isn’t a bug on it?”

“There never are any bugs,” Laura protested. “These prairies are so clean! There never was such a clean place.”

“You look, just the same,” said Mary. “I don’t want to eat the only bug in the whole of Dakota Territory.”

They laughed together. Mary was so light-hearted now that she often made such little jokes. Her face was so serene in her sunbonnet, her blue eyes were so clear and her voice so gay that she did not seem to be walking in darkness.

Mary had always been good. Sometimes she had been so good that Laura could hardly bear it. But now she seemed different. Once Laura asked her about it.

“You used to try all the time to be good,” Laura said. “And you always were good. It made me so mad sometimes, I wanted to slap you. But now you are good without even trying.”

Mary stopped still. “Oh, Laura, how awful! Do you ever want to slap me now?”

“No, never,” Laura answered honestly.

“You honestly don’t? You aren’t just being gentle to me because I’m blind?”

“No! Really and honestly, no, Mary. I hardly think about your being blind. I—I’m just glad you’re my sister. I wish I could be like you. But I guess I never can be,” Laura sighed. “I don’t know how you can be so good.”

“I’m not really,” Mary told her. “I do try, but if you could see how rebellious and mean I feel sometimes, if you could see what I really am, inside, you wouldn’t want to be like me.”

“I can see what you’re like inside,” Laura contradicted. “It shows all the time. You’re always perfectly patient and never the least bit mean.”

“I know why you wanted to slap me,” Mary said. “It was because I was showing off. I wasn’t really wanting to be good. I was showing off to myself, what a good little girl I was, and being vain and proud, and I deserved to be slapped for it.”

Laura was shocked. Then suddenly she felt that she had known that, all the time. But, nevertheless, it was not true of Mary. She said, “Oh no, you’re not like that, not really. You are good.”

“We are all desperately wicked and inclined to evil as the sparks fly upwards,” said Mary, using the Bible words. “But that doesn’t matter.”

“What!” cried Laura.

“I mean I don’t believe we ought to think so much about ourselves, about whether we are bad or good,” Mary explained.

“But, my goodness! How can anybody be good without thinking about it?” Laura demanded.

“I don’t know, I guess we couldn’t,” Mary admitted. “I don’t know how to say what I mean very well. But—it isn’t so much thinking, as—as just knowing. Just being sure of the goodness of God.”

Laura stood still, and so did Mary, because she dared not step without Laura’s arm in hers guiding her. There Mary stood in the midst of the green and flowery miles of grass rippling in the wind, under the great blue sky and white clouds sailing, and she could not see. Everyone knows that God is good. But it seemed to Laura then that Mary must be sure of it in some special way.

“You are sure, aren’t you?” Laura said.

“Yes, I am sure of it now all the time,” Mary answered. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. I think that’s the loveliest Psalm of all. Why are we stopping here? I don’t smell the violets.”

“We came by the buffalo wallow, talking,” said Laura. “We’ll go back that way.”

When they turned back, Laura could see the low swell of land sloping up from the coarse grasses of Big Slough to the little claim shanty. It looked hardly larger than a hen coop, with its half-roof slanting up and stopping. The sod stable hardly showed in the wild grasses. Beyond them Ellen and the two calves were grazing, and to the east Pa was planting corn in the newly broken sod.

He had broken all the sod he had time to, before the ground grew too dry. He had harrowed the ground he had broken last year, and sowed it to oats. Now with a sack of seed corn fastened to a shoulder harness, and the hoe in his hand, he was going slowly across the sod field.