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The baby kitten should have had its mother to lick its wounds and purr proudly over it. Ma carefully washed the bites and fed her warmed milk, Carrie and Grace stroked her wee nose and fuzzy soft head, and under Mary’s warm hand she cuddled to sleep. Grace carried the dead mouse out by the tail and threw it far away. And all the rest of that day they often said, What a tale they had to tell Pa when he came home!
They waited until he had washed, and combed his hair, and sat down to supper. Laura answered his question about the chores; she had watered the horses and Ellen and the calves, and moved their picket pins. The nights were so pleasant now that she need not put them in the stable. They slept under the stars, and woke and grazed whenever they liked. Then came the time to tell Pa what the kitten had done.
He said he had never heard anything like it. He looked at the little blue and white kitty, walking carefully across the floor with her thin tail standing straight up, and he said, “That kitten will be the best hunter in the county.”
The day was ending in perfect satisfaction. They were all there together. All the work, except the supper dishes, was done until tomorrow. They were all enjoying good bread and butter, fried potatoes, cottage cheese, and lettuce leaves sprinkled with vinegar and sugar.
Beyond the open door and window the prairie was dusky but the sky was still pale, with the first stars beginning to quiver in it. The wind went by, and in the house the air stirred, pleasantly warmed by the cookstove and scented with prairie freshness and food and tea and a cleanness of soap and a faint lingering smell of the new boards that made the new bedrooms.
In all that satisfaction, perhaps the best part was knowing that tomorrow would be like today, the same and yet a little different from all other days, as this one had been. But Laura did not know this, until Pa asked her, “How would you like to work in town?”
Chapter 5
Working in Town
No one could imagine what work there could be for a girl in town, if it wasn’t working as a hired girl in the hotel.
“It’s a new idea of Clancy’s,” Pa said. Mr. Clancy was one of the new merchants. Pa was working on his store building. “We’ve got the store pretty near finished, and he’s moving in his dry goods. His wife’s mother’s come West with them, and she’s going to make shirts.”
“Make shirts?” said Ma.
“Yes. So many men are baching on their claims around here that Clancy figures he’ll get most of the trade in yard goods, with somebody there in the store making them up into shirts, for men that haven’t got any womenfolks to do their sewing.”
“That is a good idea,” Ma had to admit.
“You bet! There’s no flies on Clancy,” said Pa, “He’s got a machine to sew the shirts.”
Ma was interested. “A sewing machine. Is it like that picture we saw in the Inter-Ocean? How does it work?”
“About like I figured out it would,” Pa answered. “You work the pedal with your feet, and that turns the wheel and works the needle up and down. There’s a little contraption underneath the needle that’s wound full of thread, too. Clancy was showing some of us. It goes like greased lightning, and makes as neat a seam as you’d want to see.
“I wonder how much it costs,” said Ma.
“’Way too much for ordinary folks,” said Pa. “But Clancy looks on it as an investment; he’ll get his money back in profits.”
“Yes, of course,” Ma said. Laura knew she was thinking how much work such a machine would save, but even if they could afford it, it would be foolish to buy one only for family sewing. “Does he expect Laura to learn how to run it?”
Laura was alarmed. She could not be responsible for some accident to such a costly machine.
“Oh, no, Mrs. White’s going to run it,” Pa replied. “She wants a good handy girl to help with the hand sewing.”
He said to Laura: “She was asking me if I knew such a girl. I told her you’re a good sewer, and she wants you to come in and help her. Clancy’s got more orders for shirts than she can handle by herself. She says she’ll pay a good willing worker twenty-five cents a day and dinner.”
Quickly Laura multiplied in her head. That was a dollar and a half a week, a little more than six dollars a month. If she worked hard and pleased Mrs. White, maybe she could work all summer. She might earn fifteen dollars, maybe even twenty, to help send Mary to college.
She did not want to work in town, among strangers. But she couldn’t refuse a chance to earn maybe fifteen dollars, or ten, or five. She swallowed, and asked, “May I go, Ma?”
Ma sighed. “I don’t like it much, but it isn’t as if you had to go alone. Your Pa will be there in town. Yes, if you want to, you may.”
“I—don’t want to leave you all the work to do,” Laura faltered.
Carrie eagerly offered to help. She could make beds, and sweep, and do the dishes by herself, and weed in the garden. Ma said that Mary was a great help in the house, too, and now that the stock was picketed out, the evening’s chores were not so much to do. She said, “We’ll miss you, Laura, but we can manage.”
There was no time to waste next morning. Laura brought the water and milked Ellen, she hurried to wash and to brush and braid her hair and pin it up. She put on her newest calico dress, and stockings and shoes. She rolled up her thimble in a freshly ironed apron.
The little breakfast that she had time to swallow had no taste. She tied on her sunbonnet and hurried away with Pa. They must be at work in town by seven o’clock.
Morning freshness was in the air. Meadow larks were singing, and up from Big Slough rose the thunder-pumps with long legs dangling and long necks outstretched, giving their short, booming cry. It was a beautiful, lively morning, but Pa and Laura were too hurried. They were running a race with the sun.
