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“I guess it’s because we just seem to belong together,” Laura said. “Besides, I have practically left home anyway; I am away so much. I won’t be any further away than I am at Wilkins.”
“Oh, well, I guess it has to be that way. I went away to college, and now you’re going away. That’s growi
ng up, I suppose.”
“It’s strange to think,” Laura said. “Carrie and Grace are older now than we used to be. They are growing up, too. Yet it would be even stranger if we stayed as we were for always, wouldn’t it?”
“There he is coming now,” said Mary. She had heard the buggy and Prince’s and Lady’s hoofs, and no one could have guessed that she was blind, to see her beautiful blue eyes turned toward them as if she saw them. “I’ve hardly seen you,” she said. “And now you have to go.”
“Not till after supper. I’ll be back next Friday, and besides, we’ll have all July and most of August together,” Laura reminded her.
At four o’clock on the last Friday in June, Almanzo drove Barnum and Skip up to the Wilkinses’ door to take Laura home. As they drove along the familiar road, he said, “And so another school is finished, the last one.”
“Are you sure?” Laura replied demurely.
“Aren’t we?” he asked. “You will be frying my breakfast pancakes sometime along the last of September.”
“Or maybe a little later,” Laura promised. He had already begun to build the house on the tree claim.
“In the meantime, how about the Fourth of July? Do you want to go to the celebration?”
“I’d much rather go for a drive,” Laura answered.
“Suits me!” he agreed. “This team’s getting too frisky again. I’ve been working on the house and they’ve had a few days’ rest. It’s time we took the ginger out of them on some more of those long drives.”
“Any time! I’m free now.” Laura was gay. She felt like a bird out of a cage.
“We’ll have the first long drive on the Fourth, then,” said Almanzo.
So on the Fourth, soon after dinner, Laura put on her new lawn dress for the first time, and for the first time she wore the cream-colored hat with the shaded ostrich tips. She was ready when Almanzo came.
Barnum and Skip stood for her to get into the buggy, but they were nervous and in a hurry to go. “The crowd excited them, coming through town,” Almanzo said. “We will only go to the end of Main Street, where you can see the flags, then we will go south, away from the noise.”
The road south toward Brewster’s was so changed that it hardly seemed to be the same road that they had traveled so many times to Laura’s first school. New claim shanties and some houses were scattered over the prairie, and there were many fields of growing grain. Cattle and horses were feeding along the way.
Instead of being white with blowing snow, the prairie was many shades of soft green, but the wind still blew. It came from the south and was warm; it blew the wild grass and the grain in the fields; it blew the horses’ manes and tails streaming behind them; it blew the fringes of the lap robe that was tucked in tightly to protect Laura’s delicate lawn dress. And it blew the lovely, cream-colored ostrich feathers off Laura’s hat.
She caught them with the very tips of her fingers as they were being whirled away. “Oh! Oh!” she exclaimed in vexation. “It must be they were not sewed on well.”
“Miss Bell hasn’t been in the west long enough yet,” Almanzo said. “She is not used to prairie winds. Better let me put those feathers in my pocket before you lose them.”
It was suppertime when they came home, and Almanzo stayed to help eat the cold remains of the Fourth of July dinner. There was plenty of cold chicken and pie; there was a cake and a pitcher of lemonade made with fresh, cold water from the well.
At supper Almanzo proposed that Carrie go with him and Laura to see the fireworks in town. “The horses have had such a long drive that I think they will behave,” he said, but Ma replied, “Of course Laura will go if she wishes; she is used to circus horses. But Carrie better not.” So Laura and Almanzo went.
They kept the horses well outside the crowd, so that no one would be trampled or run over. In an open space at safe distance they sat in the buggy and waited until a streak of fire rose in the darkness above the crowd and exploded a star.
At the first flash Barnum reared and Skip leaped. They came down running, and the buggy came down and ran after them. Almanzo swung them in a wide circle, bringing them to face the fireworks again just as another star exploded.
“Don’t bother about the horses,” he told Laura. “I’ll manage them. You watch the fireworks.”
So Laura did. After each explosion of beauty against the darkness, Almanzo drove the circle, always bringing Barnum and Skip around in time to face the next rush and blossom of fire. Not until the last shower of sparks had faded did Almanzo and Laura drive away.
Then Laura said, “It is really a good thing that you have my feathers in your pocket. If they had been on my hat while I was watching the fireworks, they would have been twisted off, we whirled so fast.”
“Are they in my pocket yet?” Almanzo exclaimed in surprise.
“I hope so,” said Laura. “If they are, I can sew them on my hat again.”
