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Early next Sunday morning, Almanzo and his brother Royal came. Royal was driving his own team, hitched to his peddler’s cart. Almanzo drove Lady, hitched single to his shining, lazy-back buggy. Pa came out of the stable to meet them, and Almanzo drove the buggy under the hay-covered shed. There he unhitched Lady, then led her into the stable.
Afterward, leaving Pa and Royal talking, he came to the kitchen door. He hadn’t time to stop, he told Ma, but he would like to see Laura for a moment.
Ma sent him into the sitting room, and as Laura turned from plumping up the cushions on the window seat, the ring on her hand sparkled in the morning light.
Almanzo smiled. “Your new ring is becoming to your hand,” he said.
Laura turned her hand in the sunshine. The gold of the ring gleamed, the garnet glowed richly in the center of the flat, oval set, and on either side of it the pearl shimmered lustrously.
“It is beautiful, this ring,” she said.
“I would say the hand,” Almanzo replied. “I suppose your father told you that Royal and I are going home sooner than we expected. Royal decided to drive through Iowa, so we are starting now. I brought Lady and the buggy over, for you to use whenever you please.”
“Where is Prince?” Laura asked.
“One of my neighbors is keeping Prince, and Lady’s colt, and Cap is keeping Barnum and Skip. I’ll need all four of them in the spring.” A shrill whistle sounded from outside, “Royal is calling, so kiss me good-by and I’ll go,” Almanzo finished.
They kissed quickly, then Laura went with him to the door and watched while he and Royal drove away. She felt left behind and unhappy. Then at her elbow Carrie asked, “Are you going to be lonesome?” so soberly that Laura smiled.
“No, I’m not going to be lonesome,” she answered stoutly. “After dinner we will hitch up Lady and go for a drive.”
Pa came in and went to the stove. “It’s getting so a fire feels good,” he said. “Caroline, what would you think of staying here all winter, instead of going to town? I’ve been figuring. I believe I can rent the building in town this winter, and if I can, I can tar-paper and side this house. Maybe even paint it.”
“That would be a gain, Charles,” Ma said at once.
“Another thing,” Pa continued. “We have so much stock now, it would be a big job to move all the hay and fodder. With this house sided outside, and good thick building paper inside, we’d be snug here. We can put up the coal heater in the sitting room and get our winter’s supply of coal. There’s a cellarful of vegetables from the garden, pumpkins and squashes from the field. Even if the winter’s so bad I can’t get to town often, we won’t need to worry about being hungry or cold.”
“This is true,” said Ma. “But, Charles, the girls must go to school, and it’s too far for them to walk in the wintertime. A blizzard might come up.”
“I will drive them there and back,” Pa promised. “It’s only a mile, and it will be a quick trip with the bobsled and no load.”
“Very well,” Ma consented. “If you rent the building in town, and want to stay here, I am satisfied to do so. I will be glad not to move.”
So before snow fell, all was snug on the homestead claim. In its new siding the little house was really a house, no longer a claim shanty. Inside, thick gray building paper covered all the pine-board walls. They had grown so brown with time, that the lighter paper brightened the rooms, and the freshly starched white muslin curtains gave them a crisp look.
When the first heavy snows came, Pa put the wagon box on the bobsled runners, and half-filled it with hay. Then on school days, Laura and Carrie, with Grace snuggled between them, sat on the blanket-covered hay, with other blankets tucked over and around them, while Pa drove them to the schoolhouse in the morning and brought them home at night to the warmly welcoming house.
Every afternoon on his way to the school, he stopped at the post office, and once or twice a week there was a letter for Laura, from Almanzo. He had reached his father’s home in Minnesota; he would come back in the spring.
Chapter 25
The Night before Christmas
On Christmas Eve again, there was a Christmas tree at the church in town. In good time, the Christmas box had gone to Mary, and the house was full of Christmas secrets as the girls hid from each other to wrap the presents for the
Christmas tree. But at ten o’clock that morning, snow began to fall.
Still it seemed that it might be possible to go to the Christmas tree. All the afternoon Grace watched from the window, and once or twice the wind moderated. By suppertime, however, it was howling at the eaves, and the air was thick with flying snow.
“It’s too dangerous to risk it,” Pa said. It was a straight wind, blowing steadily, but you never could tell; it might turn into a blizzard while the people were in the church.
No plans had been made for Christmas Eve at home, so everyone had much to do. In the kitchen Laura was popping corn in the iron kettle set into a hole of the stove top from which she had removed the stove lid. She put a handful of salt into the kettle; when it was hot she put in a handful of popcorn. With a long-handled spoon she stirred it, while with the other hand she held the kettle’s cover to keep the corn from flying out as it popped. When it stopped popping she dropped in another handful of corn and kept on stirring, but now she need not hold the cover, for the popped white kernels stayed on top and kept the popping kernels from jumping out of the kettle.
Ma was boiling molasses in a pan. When Laura’s kettle was full of popped corn, Ma dipped some into a large pan, poured a thin trickle of the boiling molasses over it, and then buttering her hands, she deftly squeezed handfuls of it into popcorn balls. Laura kept popping corn and Ma made it into balls until the large dishpan was heaped with their sweet crispness.
In the sitting room Carrie and Grace made little bags of pink mosquito netting, left over last summer from the screen door. They filled the bags with Christmas candy that Pa had brought from town that week.
“It’s lucky I thought we’d want more candy than we’d likely get at the Christmas tree,” Pa took credit to himself.
