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Then he, too, was silent. The little boy fretted, trying to reach everything on the table. Suddenly he flung his tin plate of food on the floor. Mrs. Brewster slapped his hands, and he screamed. He went on screaming and kicking the table leg.
At last the meal was over. Mr. Brewster took the milk pail from its nail on the wall and went to the stable. Mrs. Brewster sat the little boy on the floor and gradually he stopped crying, while Laura helped to clear the table. Then she got an apron from Ma’s satchel, tied it over her brown princess dress, and took a towel, to dry the dishes while Mrs. Brewster washed them.
“What’s your little boy’s name, Mrs. Brewster?” she asked. She hoped that Mrs. Brewster would be more pleasant now.
“John,” said Mrs. Brewster.
“That’s such a nice name,” Laura said. “People can call him Johnny while he’s little, and then when he grows up, John is a good name for a man. Do you call him Johnny now?”
Mrs. Brewster did not answer. The silence grew more and more dreadful. Laura felt her face grow burning hot. She went on wiping the dishes blindly. When they were done, Mrs. Brewster threw out the dishwater and hung the pan on its nail. She sat in the rocking chair and rocked idly, while Johnny crawled under the stove and dragged the cat out by its tail. The cat scratched him and he bawled. Mrs. Brewster went on rocking.
Laura did not dare to interfere. Johnny screamed, Mrs. Brewster sullenly rocked, and Laura sat in the straight chair by the table and looked out at the prairie. The road went straight across the snow and far away, out of sight. Twelve miles away was home. Ma was getting supper now; Carrie was home from school; they were laughing and talking with Grace. Pa would come in, and swing Grace up in his arms as he used to lift Laura when she was little. They would all go on talking at the supper table. Later they would sit in the lamplight, cosily reading while Carrie studied; then Pa would play the fiddle.
The room grew dark, and darker. Laura could not see the road any more. At last Mr. Brewster came in with the milk. Then Mrs. Brewster lighted the lamp. She strained the milk and set the pan away, while Mr. Brewster sat down and opened a newspaper. Neither of them spoke. The unpleasant silence settled heavily down.
Laura did not know what to do; it was too early to go to bed. There was no other paper, and not a book in the room. Then she thought of her schoolbooks. Going into the cold, dark bedroom she groped in Ma’s satchel and found her history book by the sense of touch. Taking it into the kitchen she sat down by the table again and began to study.
“At least, nothing hinders my studying,” she thought grimly. She felt hurt and sore as if she had been beaten, but gradually she forgot where she was, by keeping her mind fixed on history. At last she heard the clock strike eight. Then she stood up and said good night politely. Mrs. Brewster did not answer, but Mr. Brewster said, “Good night.”
In the bedroom Laura shivered out of her dress and petticoats, and into her flannel nightgown. She got under the covers on the sofa and pulled the calico curtains around it. The pillow was of feathers, and there were sheets, and plenty of quilts, but the sofa was very narrow.
She heard Mrs. Brewster talking angrily and very fast. The quilts were over Laura’s head, so that only the tip of her nose was out in the cold, but she could not help hearing Mrs. Brewster’s quarreling. “…suits you, but I keep a boarder!” she heard, and “…this horrible country out here! Schoolteacher, indeed!…been a teacher myself, if I hadn’t married a…”
Laura thought: “She doesn’t want to board the teacher, that is all. She’d be as cross to anybody else.” She did her best not to hear any more, and to go to sleep. But all night, in her sleep, she was careful not to fall off the narrow sofa, and she was dreading tomorrow when she must begin to teach school.
Chapter 2
First Day of School
Laura heard a stove lid rattle. For one instant she was in bed with Mary, and Pa was building the morning fire. Then she saw the calico curtain and she knew where she was, and that today she must begin to teach school.
She heard Mr. Brewster take down the milk pail, and the door slammed behind him. On the other side of the curtain Mrs. Brewster got out of bed. Johnny whimpered, and was still. Laura did not move; she felt that if she lay still enough, she might keep the day from coming.
Mr. Brewster came in with the milk, and she heard him say, “I’m going to start a fire in the schoolhouse. I’ll be back by the time breakfast’s ready.” The door slammed behind him again.
All at once, Laura threw back the covers. The air was biting cold. Her teeth chattered and her fingers were so stiff that she could not button her shoes.
The kitchen was not so cold. Mrs. Brewster had broken the ice in the water pail an
d was filling the tea-kettle, and she replied pleasantly to Laura’s “Good morning.” Laura filled the wash basin and washed her hands and face at the bench by the door. The icy water made her cheeks tingle, and her whole face was rosy and glowing in the looking glass above the bench while she combed her hair before it.
Slices of salt pork were frying, and Mrs. Brewster was slicing cold boiled potatoes into another frying pan on the stove. Johnny fussed in the bedroom, and Laura quickly pinned her braids, tied on her apron, and said, “Let me fix the potatoes while you dress him.”
So while Mrs. Brewster brought Johnny to the stove and made him ready for breakfast, Laura finished slicing the potatoes, and salted and peppered and covered them. Then she turned the slices of meat and set the table neatly.
“I’m glad Ma told me to bring this big apron,” she said. “I like a real big apron that covers your whole dress, don’t you?”
Mrs. Brewster did not answer. The stove was red now and the whole room was warm, but it seemed bleak. Nothing but short, necessary words were said at the breakfast table.
It was a relief to Laura to put on her wraps, take her books and her tin dinner pail, and leave that house. She set out on the half-mile walk through the snow to the schoolhouse. The way was unbroken, except for Mr. Brewster’s footsteps, which were so far apart that Laura could not walk in them.
As she floundered on, plunging into the deep snow, she suddenly laughed aloud. “Well!” she thought. “Here I am. I dread to go on, and I would not go back. Teaching school cannot possibly be as bad as staying in that house with Mrs. Brewster. Anyway, it cannot be worse.”
Then she was so frightened that she said aloud, “I’ve got to go on.” Black soft-coal smoke rose against the morning sky from the old claim shanty’s stovepipe. Two more lines of footprints came to its door, and Laura heard voices inside it. For a moment she gathered her courage, then she opened the door and went in.
The board walls were not battened. Streaks of sunshine streamed through the cracks upon a row of six homemade seats and desks that marched down the middle of the room. Beyond them on the studding of the opposite wall, a square of boards had been nailed and painted black, to make a blackboard.
In front of the seats stood a big heating stove. Its round sides and top were cherry-red from the heat of the fire, and standing around it were the scholars that Laura must teach. They all looked at Laura. There were five of them, and two boys and one girl were taller than she was.
