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Pa’s doubtful eyes brightened, and twinkled at her and Carrie. Ma smiled on them.
“Yes, Charles, it will be a nice outing for you all,” she said. “Run down cellar and bring up the butter, Carrie, and while you’re dressing I’ll put up some bread-and-butter for you to take along.”
Suddenly the day seemed really Fourth of July. Ma made sandwiches, Pa blacked his boots, Laura and Carrie hurriedly dressed up. Luckily Laura’s sprigged calico was freshly washed and ironed. She and Carrie took turns scrubbing their faces and necks and ears pink. Over their unbleached muslin union suits they put on crackling stiff petticoats of bleached muslin. They brushed and braided their hair. Laura wound her heavy braids around her head and pinned them. She tied the Sunday hair ribbon on the ends of Carrie’s braids. Then she put on her fresh sprigged calico and buttoned it up the back. The full ruffle on the bottom of the full skirt came down to the tops of her shoes.
“Please button me up,” Carrie asked. In the middle of her back there were two buttons that she couldn’t reach. She had buttoned all the others outside-in.
“You can’t wear your buttons turned inside, at a Fourth of July celebration,” said Laura, unbuttoning them all and buttoning them again properly.
“If they’re outside, they keep pulling my hair,” Carrie protested. “My braids catch on them.”
“I know. Mine always did,” said Laura. “But you just have to stand it till you’re big enough to put your hair up.”
They put on their sunbonnets. Pa was waiting, holding the brown-paper packet of sandwiches. Ma looked at them carefully and said, “You look very nice.”
“It’s a treat to me, to be stepping out with my two good-looking girls,” said Pa.
“You look nice, too, Pa,” Laura told him. His boots were glossily polished, his beard was trimmed, and he was wearing his Sunday suit and broad-brimmed felt hat.
“I want to go!” Grace demanded. Even when Ma said “No, Grace,” she repeated two or three times, “I want to!” Because she was the baby, they had almost spoiled her. Now her unruliness must be nipped in the bud. Pa had to set her sternly in a chair and tell her, “You heard your Ma speak.”
They set out soberly, unhappy about Grace. But she must be taught to mind. Perhaps next year she could go, if there were a big celebration and they all rode in the wagon. Now they were walking, to let the horses stay on their picket ropes and eat grass. Horses grow tired, standing all day at hitching posts in dust and heat. Grace was too little to walk the mile and back, and she was too big to be carried.
Even before they reached town, they could hear a sound like corn popping. Carrie asked what it was, and Pa said it was firecrackers.
Horses were tied along the whole length of Main Street. Men and boys were so thick on the sidewalk that in places they almost touched each other. Boys were throwing lighted firecrackers into the dusty street, where they sizzled and exploded. The noise was startling.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” Carrie murmured. Laura did not like it, either. They had never been in such a crowd before. There was nothing to do but keep on walking up and down in it, and to be among so many strangers made them uncomfortable.
Twice they walked the two blocks with Pa, and then Laura asked him if she and Carrie could not stay in his store building. Pa said that was a fine idea. They could watch the crowd while he circulated a little; then they would eat their lunch and see the races. He let them into the empty building and Laura shut the door.
It was pleasant to be alone in the echoing bare place. They looked at the empty kitchen behind it, where they had all lived huddled during the long hard winter. They tiptoed upstairs to the hollow, hot bedrooms under the eaves of the shingle roof, and stood looking down from the front window at the crowd, and at firecrackers squirming and popping in the dust.
“I wish we had some firecrackers,” Carrie said.
“They’re guns,” Laura pretended. “We’re in Fort Ticonderoga, and those are British and Indians. We’re Americans, fighting for independence.”
“It was the British in Fort Ticonderoga, and the Green Mountain boys took it,” Carrie objected.
“Then I guess we’re with Daniel Boone in Kentucky, and this is a log stockade,” said Laura. “Only the British and Indians captured him,” she had to admit.
“How much do firecrackers cost?” Carrie asked.
“Even if Pa could afford them, it’s foolish to spend money just to make a little noise,” Laura said. “Look at that little bay pony. Let’s pick out the horses we like best; you can have first choice.”
There was so much to see that they could hardly believe it was noon when Pa’s boots sounded downstairs and he called, “Girls! Where are you?”
They rushed down. He was having a good time, his eyes were twinkling bright. He sang out, “I’ve brought us a treat! Smoked herring, to go with our bread and butter! And look what else!” He showed them a bunch of firecrackers.
“Oh, Pa!” Carrie cried. “How much did they cost?”
“Didn’t cost me a cent,” said Pa. “Lawyer Barnes handed them to me, said to give them to you girls.”
“Why on earth did he do that?” Laura asked. She had never heard of Lawyer Barnes before.
“Oh, he’s going in for politics, I guess,” said Pa. “He acts that way, affable and agreeable to everybody. You want me to set these off for you now, or after we eat?”
Laura and Carrie were thinking the same thing. They knew it when they looked at each other, and Carrie said it. “Let’s save them, Pa, to take home to Grace.”
