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“I really don’t know whether we’ll like it out here,” Nellie said. “We are from the East. We are not used to such a rough country and rough people.”
“You come from western Minnesota, from the same place we did,” said Laura.
“Oh, that?” Nellie brushed away Minnesota with her hand. “We were there only a little while. We come from the East, from New York State.”
“We all come from the East,” Mary Power told her shortly. “Come on, let’s all go outdoors in the sunshine.”
“My goodness, no!” said Nellie. “Why, this wind will tan your skin!”
They were all tanned but Nellie, and she went on airily, “I may have to live out in this rough country for a little while, but I shan’t let it spoil my complexion. In the East, a lady always keeps her skin white and her hands smooth.” Nellie’s hands were white and slender.
There was no time to go outdoors, anyway. Recess was over. Miss Wilder went to the door and rang the bell.
At home that night, Carrie chattered about the day at school until Pa said she was as talkative as a bluejay. “Let Laura get a word in edgewise. Why are you so quiet, Laura? Anything go wrong?”
Then Laura told about Nellie Oleson and all she had said and done. She finished, “Miss Wilder shouldn’t have let her take the seat away from Mary Power and Minnie.”
“Nor should you ever criticize a teacher, Laura,” Ma gently reminded her.
Laura felt her cheeks grow hot. She knew what a great opportunity it was, to go to school. Miss Wilder was there to help her learn, she should be grateful, she should never impertinently criticize. She should only try to be perfect in her lessons and in deportment. Yet she could not help thinking, “Just the same, she shouldn’t have! It was not fair.”
“So the Olesons came from New York State, did they?” Pa was amused. “That’s not so much to brag about.”
Laura remembered then that Pa had lived in New York State when he was a boy.
He went on, “I don’t know how it happened, but Oleson lost everything he had in Minnesota. He hasn’t a thing in the world now but his homestead claim, and they tell me his folks back East are helping him out, or he couldn’t hang on to that till he makes a crop. Maybe Nellie feels she’s got to brag a little, to hold her own. I wouldn’t let it worry me, Laura.”
“But she had such pretty clothes,” Laura protested. “And she can’t do a bit of work, she keeps her face and her hands so white.”
“You could wear your sunbonnet, you know,” said Ma. “As for her pretty dresses, likely they come out of a barrel, and maybe she’s like the girl in the song, who was so fine ‘with a double ruffle around her neck and nary a shoe to wear.’”
Laura supposed she should be sorry for Nellie, but she wasn’t. She wished that Nellie Oleson had stayed in Plum Creek.
Pa got up from the supper table and drew his chair near the open door. He said, “Bring me the fiddle, Laura. I want to try a song I heard a fellow singing the other day. He whistled the chorus. I believe the fiddle will beat his whistling.”
Softly Laura and Carrie washed the dishes, not to miss a note of the music. Pa sang, low and longingly, with the sweet clear voice of the fiddle.
“Then meet me—Oh, meet me,
When you hear
The first whip-poor-will call—”
“Whip-poor-will,” the fiddle called, and fluting, throbbing like the throat of the bird, “Whip-poor-will,” the fiddle answered. Near and pleading, “Whip-poor-will,” then far and soft but coming nearer, “Whip-poor-will,” till all the gathering twilight was filled with the wooing of the birds.
Laura’s thoughts untangled from their ugly snarls and became smooth and peaceful. She thought, “I will be good. It doesn’t matter how hateful Nellie Oleson is, I will be good.”
Chapter 12
Snug for Winter
All through the pleasant fall weather Laura and Carrie were busy girls. In the mornings they helped do the chores and get breakfast. Then they filled their dinner pail, dressed for school and hurried away on the mile walk to town. After school they hurried home, for there was work to do until darkness came.
Saturday was a whole day of busy working, in a hurry to be ready to move to town.
Laura and Carrie picked up potatoes while Pa dug them. They cut the tops from turnips and helped Pa pile them in the wagon. They pulled and topped the carrots, too, and the beets and onions. They gathered the tomatoes and the ground-cherries.
The ground-cherries grew on low leafy bushes. Thick on the stems under the large leaves hung the six-cornered bells, pale grey and thinner than paper, and inside each bell was a plump, golden, juicy round fruit.
