Little Town on the Prairie (Little House 7)

“What are you laughing at, Laura?” Miss Wilder asked sharply, turning from the blackboard.

“Why, was I laughing?” Laura looked up from her book and sounded surprised. The room was quiet, the boys were in their seats, everyone seemed to be busily studying.

“Well, see that you don’t!” Miss Wilder snapped. She looked sharply at Laura, then turned to the blackboard, and almost everyone but Laura and Carrie burst out laughing.

All the rest of the morning, Laura was quiet and kept her eyes on her lessons, only stealing a glance at Carrie now and then. Once Carrie looked back at Laura. Laura put a finger to her lips, and Carrie bent again over her book.

With so much noise and confusion behind her whichever way she turned, Miss Wilder grew confused herself. At noon she dismissed school half an hour early, and again Laura and Carrie were asked to explain their early arrival at home.

They told of the disorder in school, and Pa looked serious. But all he said was, “You girls be very sure that you behave yourselves. Now remember what I say.”

They did. Next day the disorder was worse. The wh

ole school was almost openly jeering at Miss Wilder. Laura was appalled at what she had started, by only two smiles at naughtiness. Still she would not try to stop it. She would never forgive Miss Wilder’s unfairness to Carrie. She did not want to forgive her.

Now that everyone was teasing, baiting, or at least giggling at Miss Wilder, Nellie joined in. She was still teacher’s pet, but she repeated to the other girls everything that Miss Wilder said, and laughed at her. One day she told them that Miss Wilder’s name was Eliza Jane.

“It’s a secret,” Nellie said. “She’s told me a long time ago, but she doesn’t want anyone else out here to know it.”

“I don’t see why,” Ida wondered. “Eliza Jane is a nice name.”

“I can tell you why,” said Nellie. “When she was a little girl, in New York State, a dirty little girl came to school and Miss Wilder had to sit with her, and”— Nellie drew the others close and whispered—“she got lice in her hair.”

They all backed away, and Mary Power exclaimed, “You shouldn’t tell such horrid things, Nellie!”

“I wouldn’t, only Ida asked me,” said Nellie.

“Why, Nellie Oleson, I did no such thing!” Ida declared.

“You did so! Listen,” Nellie giggled. “That isn’t all. Her mother sent a note to the teacher, and the teacher sent the dirty little girl home, so everyone knew about it. And Miss Wilder’s mother kept her out of school a whole morning to fine-comb her hair. Miss Wilder cried and cried, and she dreaded so to go back to school that she walked slow and was late. At recess her whole class made a ring around her and kept yelling, ‘Lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane!’ And from that day to this, she just can’t bear her name. As long as she was in that school, that’s what anyone called her that got mad at her, ‘Lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane!’”

She said it so comically that they laughed, though they were a little ashamed of doing so. Afterward, they agreed that they would never tell Nellie anything, because she was two-faced.

The school was so noisy that it was not really school any more. When Miss Wilder rang the bell, all the pupils joyfully trooped in to annoy her. She could not watch every one of them at once, she could hardly ever catch anyone. They banged their slates and their books, they threw paper wads and spitballs, they whistled between their teeth and scampered in the aisles. They were all together against Miss Wilder, they delighted in harassing and baffling and hounding her and jeering.

That feeling against Miss Wilder almost frightened Laura. No one could stop them now. The disorder was so great that Laura could not study. If she could not learn her lessons, she could not get a teacher’s certificate soon enough to help keep Mary in college. Perhaps Mary must leave college, because Laura had twice smiled at naughtiness.

She knew now that she should not have done that. Yet she did not really repent. She did not forgive Miss Wilder. She felt hard and hot as burning coal when she thought of Miss Wilder’s treatment of Carrie. One Friday morning Ida gave up trying to study in the confusion, and began to draw on her slate. The whole First spelling class was making mistakes on purpose and laughing at them. Miss Wilder sent the class to the board to write the lesson. Then she was caught between the pupils at the board and those in the seats. Ida was busily drawing, swinging her feet and humming a little tune in her throat without knowing it, and Laura kept her fists clamped to her ears and tried to study.

When Miss Wilder dismissed school for recess, Ida showed Laura the picture she had drawn. It was a comic picture of Miss Wilder, so well done that it looked exactly like her, only more so. Under it Ida had written,

We have lots of fun going to school,

Laugh and grow fat is the only rule,

Everyone laughs until their sides ache again

At lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane.

“I can’t get the verse just right, somehow,” Ida said. Mary Power and Minnie were admiring the picture and laughing, and Mary Power said, “Why don’t you get Laura to help you, she makes good verses.”

“Oh, will you, Laura? Please,” Ida asked. Laura took the slate and the pencil, and while the others waited she thought of a tune and fitted words to it. She meant only to please Ida, and perhaps, just a little, to show off what she could do. She wrote, in the place of the verse that Ida had erased,

Going to school is lots of fun,

From laughing we have gained a ton,

We laugh until we have a pain,