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“It surprises my Sunday School teacher now, how many of them I know,” said Mary. “Knowing them was a great help to me, Ma. I could read them so easily with my fingers in raised print and in Braille, that I learned how to read everything sooner than anyone else in my class.”
“I am glad to know that, Mary,” was all that Ma said, and her smile trembled, but she looked happier than when Mary had given her the beautiful lamp mat.
“Here is my Braille slate,” said Mary, lifting it from her trunk. It was an oblong of thin steel in a steel frame, as large as a school slate, with a narrow steel band across it. The band was cut into several rows of open squares, and it would slide up and down, or could be fastened in place at any point. Tied to the frame
by a string was a pencil-shaped piece of steel that Mary said was a stylus.
“How do you use it?” Pa wanted to know.
“Watch and I’ll show you,” said Mary.
They all watched while she laid a sheet of thick, cream-colored paper on the slate, under the slide. She moved the slide to the top of the frame and secured it there. Then with the point of the stylus she pressed, rapidly, here and there in the corners of the open squares.
“There,” she said, slipping the paper out and turning it over. Wherever the stylus had pressed, there was a tiny bump, that could easily be felt with the fingers. The bumps made different patterns, the size of the squares, and these were the Braille letters.
“I am writing to Blanche to tell her that I am safely home,” said Mary. “I must write to my teacher, too.” She turned the paper over, put it in the frame again, and slipped the slide down, ready to go on writing on the blank space. “I will finish them later.”
“It is wonderful that you can write to your friends and they can read your letters,” said Ma. “I can hardly believe that you are really getting the college education that we always wanted you to have.”
Laura was so happy that she felt like crying, too.
“Well, well,” Pa broke in. “Here we stand talking, when Mary must be hungry and it’s chore time. Let’s do our work now, and we will have longer to talk afterward.”
“You are right, Charles,” Ma quickly agreed. “Supper will be ready by the time you are ready for it.”
While Pa took care of the horses, Laura hurried to do the milking and Carrie made a quick fire to bake the biscuit that Ma was mixing.
Supper was ready when Pa came from the stable and Laura had strained the milk.
It was a happy family, all together again, as they ate of the browned hashed potatoes, poached fresh eggs and delicious biscuit with Ma’s good butter. Pa and Ma drank their fragrant tea, but Mary drank milk with the other girls. “It is a treat,” she said. “We don’t have such good milk at college.”
There was so much to ask and tell that almost nothing was fully said, but tomorrow would be another long day with Mary. And it was like old times again, when Laura and Mary went to sleep as they used to, in their bed where Laura for so long had been sleeping alone.
“It’s warm weather,” Mary said, “so I won’t be putting my cold feet on you as I used to do.”
“I’m so glad you’re here that I wouldn’t complain,” Laura answered. “It would be a pleasure.”
Chapter 16
Summer Days
It was such a joy to have Mary at home that the summer days were not long enough for all their pleasures. Listening to Mary’s stories of her life in college, reading aloud to her, planning and sewing to put her clothes in order, and once more going with her for long walks in the late afternoon, made the time go by too swiftly.
One Saturday morning Laura went to town to match Mary’s last winter’s best dress in silk, to make a new collar and cuffs. She found just what she wanted in a new milliner’s and dressmaker’s shop, and while Miss Bell was wrapping the little package she said to Laura, “I hear you’re a good sewer. I wish you would come and help me. I’ll pay you fifty cents a day, from seven o’clock to five, if you’ll bring your dinner.”
Laura looked around the pleasant, new place, with the pretty hats in two windows, bolts of ribbon in a glass showcase, and silks and velvets on the shelves behind it. There was a sewing machine, with an unfinished dress lying across it, and another lay on a chair nearby.
“You can see there is more work here than I can do,” Miss Bell said in her quiet voice. Miss Bell was a young woman and Laura thought her handsome with her tall figure and dark hair and eyes.
Laura decided that it would be pleasant to work with her.
“I will come if Ma is willing I should,” she promised.
“Come Monday morning if you can,” said Miss Bell.
Laura left the shop and went up the street to the post office to mail a letter for Mary. There she met Mary Power, who was on her way to do an errand at the lumberyard. They had not seen each other since the buggy ride in early spring, and there was so much to talk about that Mary begged Laura to come with her.
“All right, I will,” said Laura. “I’d like to ask Mr. McKee how Mrs. McKee and Mattie are getting along, anyway.”
