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They walked slowly, talking all the way up the street, across the cindery railroad tracks and the dusty street to the corner of the lumberyard, and there they stood talking.
A yoke of oxen was coming slowly into town on the country road from the north, hauling a lumber wagon. A man walked beside the farther ox and Laura idly watched him as he swung a long whip. The oxen trudged along until nearly to the corner, then started ahead quickly.
Laura and Mary stepped back. The man commanded, “Whoa! Haw!” But the oxen did not turn left. They swung to the right, around the corner.
“Gee, then! Go where you’re a mind to!” the driver ordered them, impatiently, but joking. Then he looked at the girls, and they exclaimed together, “Almanzo Wilder!”
He raised his hat with a cheerful flourish to them, and hurried along the street with the oxen.
“I didn’t know him without his horses!” Laura laughed.
“And the way he was dressed,” Mary disparaged him. “In those rough clothes and ugly heavy shoes.”
“He is likely breaking sod, and that is why he had oxen. He wouldn’t work Prince and Lady so hard,” Laura explained, more to herself than to Mary Power.
“Everybody is working,” Mary remarked. “Nobody can have any fun in the summertime. But Nellie Oleson is going to ride behind those horses yet, if she possibly can. You know the Olesons’ claim is a little way east of the Wilder boys’ claims.”
“Have you seen her lately?” Laura asked.
“I never see anybody,” Mary answered. “All the girls are out on their fathers’ claims, and Cap is teaming every day. Ben Woodworth is working at the depot, and nobody can get a word with Frank Harthorn nowadays, he works all the time in the store since his father has made him a partner. Minnie and Arthur are out with their folks on their homestead, and here I haven’t seen you since early April.”
“Never mind, we’ll see each other all next winter. Besides, I am coming to town to work if Ma says I may,” and Laura told Mary that she expected to sew for Miss Bell.
Suddenly she saw that the sun was almost overhead. She stopped only a moment in the lumberyard office, to hear from Mr. McKee that Mrs. McKee and Mattie were getting along all right, though they still missed her, Then quickly she said good-by to Mary and hurried away on her walk home. She had stayed in town too long. Though she walked so fast that she was almost running, dinner was ready when she reached home.
“I am sorry I stayed so long, but so many things happened,” she made excuse.
“Yes?” Ma inquired, and Carrie asked, “What happened?”
Laura told of meeting Mary Power and of seeing Mr. McKee. “I visited too long with Mary Power,” she confessed. “The time went so quickly that I did not know it was so late.” Then she told the rest. “Miss Bell wants me to work for her in her shop. May I, Ma?”
“Why, Laura, I declare I don’t know,” Ma exclaimed. “You have only just got home.”
“She will pay me fifty cents a day, from seven o’clock to five, if I bring my own dinner,” Laura told them.
“That is fair enough,” said Pa. “You take your own dinner, but you get off an hour early.”
“But you came home to be with Mary,” Ma objected.
“I know, Ma, but I will see her every night and morning and all day Sunday,” Laura argued. “I don’t know why, but I feel I ought to be earning something.”
“That is the way it is, once you begin to earn,” Pa said.
“I will be earning three dollars a week,” said Laura. “And seeing Mary, too. We will have lots of time to do things together, won’t we, Mary?”
“Yes, and I will d
o all your housework while you’re gone,” Mary offered. “Then on Sundays we’ll have our walks.”
“That reminds me, the new church is done,” said Pa. “We must all go to church tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be so glad to see the new church! I can hardly believe there is one!” Mary said.
“It’s there sure enough,” Pa assured her. “We’ll see for ourselves tomorrow.”
“And the next day?” Laura asked.
“Yes, you may go to work for Miss Bell. You can try it for a while anyway,” Ma said.
