These Happy Golden Years, Page 2

  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.

  “Good morning,” she managed to say.

  They all answered, still looking at her. A small window by the door let in a block of sunshine. Beyond it, in the corner by the stove, stood a small table and a chair. “That is the teacher’s table,” Laura thought, and then, “Oh my; I am the teacher.”

  Her steps sounded loud. All the eyes followed her. She put her books and dinner pail on the table, and took off her coat and hood. She hung them on a nail in the wall by the chair. On the table was a small clock; its hands stood at five minutes to nine.

  Somehow she had to get through five minutes, before the time to begin school.

  Slowly she took off her mittens and put them in the pocket of her coat. Then she faced all the eyes, and stepped to the stove. She held her hands to it as if to warm them. All the pupils made way for her, still looking at her. She must say something. She must.

  “It is cold this morning, isn’t it?” she heard herself say; then without waiting for an answer, “Do you think you can keep warm in the seats away from the stove?”

  One of the tall boys said quickly, “I’ll sit in the back seat, it’s the coldest.”

  The tall girl said, “Charles and I have to sit together, we have to study from the same books.”

  “That’s good; then you can all sit nearer the stove, Laura said. To her joyful surprise, the five minutes were gone! She said, “You may take your seats. School will begin.”

  The little girl took the front seat; behind her sat the little boy, then the tall girl and Charles, and behind them the other tall boy. Laura rapped her pencil on the table. “School will come to order. I will now take your names and ages.”

  The little girl was Ruby Brewster; she was nine years old. She had brown hair and sparkling brown eyes, and she was as soft and still as a mouse. Laura knew she would be sweet and good. She had finished the First Reader, and in arithmetic she was learning subtraction.

  The little boy was her brother Tommy Brewster. He was eleven, and had finished the Second Reader, and reached short division.

  The two sitting together were Charles and Martha Harrison. Charles was seventeen; he was thin and pale and slow of speech. Martha was sixteen; she was quicker, and spoke for them both.

  The last boy was Clarence Brewster. He, too, was older than Laura. His brown eyes were even brighter and livelier than his little sister Ruby’s, his dark hair was thick and unruly, and he was quick in speaking and moving. He had a way of speaking that was almost saucy.

  Clarence, Charles and Martha were all in the Fourth Reader. They had passed the middle of the spelling book, and in arithmetic they were working fractions. In geography they had studied the New England states, and they answered questions so well that Laura set them to learn the Middle Atlantic states. None of them had studied grammar or history, but Martha had brought her mother’s grammar and Clarence had a history book.

  “Very well,” Laura said. “You may all begin at the beginning in grammar and history, and exchange the books, to learn your lessons.

  When Laura had learned all this, and assigned their lessons, it was time for recess. They all put on their wraps and went out to play in the snow, and Laura breathed a sigh of relief. The first quarter of the first day was over.

  Then she began to plan; she would have reading, arithmetic, and grammar recitations in the forenoon, and, in the afternoon, reading again, history, writing, and spelling. There were three classes in spelling, for Ruby and Tommy were far apart in the spelling book.

  After fifteen minutes, she rapped on the window to call the pupils in. Then until noon she heard and patiently corrected their reading aloud.

  The noon hour dragged slowly. Alone at her table, Laura ate her bread and butter, while the others gathered around the stove, talking and joking while they ate from their dinner pails. Then the boys ran races in the snow outdoors, while Martha and Ruby watched them from the window and Laura still sat at her table. She was a teacher now, and must act like one.

  At last the hour was gone, and again she rapped on the window. The boys came briskly in, breathing out clouds of frosty breath and shaking cold air from their coats and mufflers as they hung them up. They were glowing from cold and exercise.

  Laura said, “The fire is low. Would you put more coal on, please, Charles?”

  Willing, but slowly, Charles lifted the heavy hod of coal and dumped most of it into the stove.

  “I’ll do that next time!” Clarence said. Perhaps he did not mean to be impertinent. If he did mean to be, what could Laura do? He was a chunky, husky boy, bigger than she was, and older. His brown eyes twinkled at her. She stood as tall as possible and rapped her pencil on the table.

  “School will come to order,” she said.

  Though the school was small, she thought best to follow the routine of the town school, and have each class come forward to recite. Ruby was alone in her class, so she must know every answer perfectly, for there was no one to help her by answering some of the questions. Laura let her spell slowly, and if she made a mistake, she might try again. She spelled every word in her lesson. Tommy was slower, but Laura gave him time to think and try, and he did as well.

  Then Martha and Charles and Clarence recited their spelling. Martha made no mistakes, but Charles missed five words and Clarence missed three. For the first time, Laura must punish them.

  “You may take your seat, Martha,” she said. “Charles and Clarence, go to the blackboard, and write the words you missed, three times each.”

  Charles slowly went, and began to write his words. Clarence glanced back at Laura with a saucy look. Rapidly he wrote large and sprawling letters that covered his half of the blackboard with only six words. Then turning toward Laura, and not even raising his hand for permission to speak, he said, “Teacher! The board’s too small.”

  He was making a joke of punishment for failing in his lesson. He was defying Laura.

  For a long, dreadful moment he stood laughing at her, and she looked straight at him.

  Then she said, “Yes, the board is small, Clarence. I am sorry, but you should erase what you have written and write the words again more carefully. Make them smaller, and there will be room enough.”

  He had to obey her, for she did not know what she could do if he did not.

  Still grinning, good-naturedly he turned to the blackboard and wiped out the scrawls. He wrote the three words three times each, and below them he signed his name with a flourish.

  With relief, Laura saw that it was four o’clock.

  “You may put away your books,” she said. When every book was neat on the shelves beneath the desk tops, she said, “School is dismissed.”

  Clarence grabbed his coat and cap and muffler from their nail and with a shout he was first through the door’ way. Tommy was at his heels, but they waited outside while Laura helped Ruby into her coat and tied her hood. More so
berly, Charles and Martha wrapped themselves well against the cold before they set out. They had a mile to walk.

  Laura stood by the window and watched them go. She could see Mr. Brewster’s brother’s claim shanty, only half a mile away. Smoke blew from its stovepipe and its west window glinted back the light from the sinking sun. Clarence and Tommy scuffled in the snow, and Ruby’s red hood bobbed along behind them. So far as Laura could see from the eastern window, the sky was clear.

  The school shanty had no window from which she could see the northwest. If a blizzard came up, she could not know that it was coming until it struck.

  She cleaned the blackboard, and with the broom she swept the floor. A dustpan was not needed, the cracks between the floorboards were so wide. She shut the stove’s drafts, put on her wraps, took her books and dinner pail, and shutting the door carefully behind her, she set out on her morning path toward Mrs. Brewster’s house.

  Her first day as a teacher was over. She was thankful for that.

  Chapter 3

  One Week

  As she went trudging through the snow, Laura made herself feel cheerful. Mrs. Brewster was hard to get acquainted with, Laura thought, but she could not always be cross. Perhaps this evening would not be unpleasant.

  So Laura went in, snowy and glowing from the cold, and spoke cheerfully to Mrs. Brewster. But to all her efforts, Mrs. Brewster answered shortly or not at all. At supper, no one said a word. The stillness was so sullen and hateful that Laura could not speak.

  After supper she helped with the work again, and sat again in the darkening room while Mrs. Brewster silently rocked. She felt sick from wanting to be at home.

  As soon as Mrs. Brewster lighted the lamp, Laura brought her schoolbooks to the table. She set herself lessons and determined to learn them before bedtime. She wanted to keep up with her class in town, and she hoped she could study hard enough to forget where she was.

  She sat small in her chair, for the silence seemed to press against her from all sides. Mrs. Brewster sat idle. Mr. Brewster held Johnny asleep on his lap, and stared into the fire through the stove’s open draft. The clock struck seven. It struck eight. It struck nine. Then Laura made an effort, and spoke.

  “It is getting late, and I’ll say good night.”

  Mrs. Brewster paid no attention. Mr. Brewster started, and said, “Good night.”

  Before Laura could hurry into bed in the cold dark, Mrs. Brewster began to quarrel at him. Laura tried not to hear. She pulled the quilts over her head and pressed her ear tight against the pillow, but she could not help hearing. She knew then that Mrs. Brewster wanted her to hear.

  For Mrs. Brewster said she’d not slave for a hoity-toity snip that had nothing to do but dress up and sit in a schoolhouse all day; she said that if Mr. Brewster did not put Laura out of the house, she’d go back east without him. She went on and on, and the sound of her voice made Laura feel sick; it was a sound that enjoyed hurting people.

  Laura did not know what to do. She wanted to go home, but she must not even think of home or she might cry. She must think what to do. There was nowhere else to stay; the other two houses in the settlement were only claim shanties. At the Harrisons’, there were four in the one room, and at Mr. Brewster’s brother’s house there were five. They could not possibly make room for Laura.

  She did not really make Mrs. Brewster any work, she thought. She made her bed and helped with the kitchen work. Mrs. Brewster was quarreling now about the flat country and the wind and the cold; she wanted to go back east. Suddenly Laura understood; “She isn’t mad at me, she’s only quarreling about me because she wants to quarrel. She’s a selfish, mean woman.”

  Mr. Brewster did not say a word. Laura thought: “I’ve just got to bear it, too. There isn’t anywhere else I can stay.”

  When she woke in the morning she thought: “I have only to get through one day at a time.”

  It was hard to stay where she was not wanted. She took care to make no work for Mrs. Brewster, and to help her all she could. Politely she said, “Good morning,” and smiled, but she could not keep on smiling. She had not known before that it takes two to make a smile.

  She dreaded the second school day, but it passed smoothly. Clarence idled instead of studying, and Laura dreaded that she must punish him again, but he knew his lessons. Perhaps she would have no trouble with him.

  It was strange that she was so tired at four o’clock. The second day was over, and the first week would be half gone at noon tomorrow.

  Suddenly Laura caught her breath, and stood stock-still on the snowy path. She had thought of Saturday and Sunday; two whole days in that house with Mrs. Brewster. She heard herself say aloud, “Oh, Pa. I can’t.”

  It was whimpering; she was ashamed when she heard it. No one else had heard. All around her the prairie was empty, white and far and still. She would rather stay there in the clean cold than go into the mean house or go back tomorrow to the anxious school day. But the sun was setting, and tomorrow it would rise; everything must go on.

  That night Laura dreamed again that she was lost in a blizzard. She knew the dream; she had dreamed it sometimes, ever since she really had been lost with Carrie in a blizzard. But this blizzard was worse than before; now the stinging snow and the wind’s hard blows tried to drive her and Carrie off the narrow sofa. Laura held on to Carrie with all her might for a long time, but suddenly Carrie was not there; the blizzard had got her. Laura’s heart stopped in horror. She could not go on, she had no more strength; she sank down, down, into the dark. Then Pa came driving from town on the bobsled; he called to Laura, “How about going home for Saturday, Half-Pint?” Ma and Mary and Carrie and Grace were so surprised! Mary said happily, “Oh, Laura!” Ma’s whole face lighted with her smiling. Carrie hurried to help Laura take off her wraps, and Grace jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “Charles, why didn’t you tell us!” Ma said, and Pa answered, “Why, Caroline, I said I’d do a little hauling. Laura’s little.” And Laura remembered how, at the dinner table, Pa had drunk his tea and pushed back his cup and said, “Guess I’ll do a little hauling this afternoon.” Ma said, “Oh, Charles!” Laura had not gone away from home at all; she was there.

  Then she woke up. She was at the Brewsters’, and it was Wednesday morning. But the dream had been so real that she still almost believed it. Pa might come to take her home over Saturday. It was like him, to plan such a surprise.

  There had been a snowstorm in the night. She had to break her path to the schoolhouse again. The early sunshine was faintly pink on miles of pure snow and every little shadow was thin blue. As Laura plunged and plowed through the soft drifts, she saw Clarence breaking a path for Tommy and Ruby behind him. They floundered to the school-shanty’s door at the same time.

  Little Ruby was covered from head to foot with snow, even her hood and her braids were snowy. Laura brushed her and told her to keep her wraps on until the room was warmer. Clarence put more coal on the fire while Laura shook her own wraps and swept the snow through the cracks between the floorboards. The sunshine streaming through the window made the shanty look warm, but it was colder than outdoors. But soon the good stove’s warmth made their breaths invisible; it was nine o’clock, and Laura said, “School will come to order.”

  Martha and Charles came in panting, three minutes late. Laura did not want to mark them tardy; they had to break their path, the whole mile. A few steps in deep snow are easy, and fun, but breaking a path is work that grows harder with every step. For a moment Laura thought of excusing Martha and Charles, this one time. But that would not be honest. No excuse could change the fact; they were tardy.

  “I am sorry I must mark you tardy,” she said. “But you may come to the stove and get warm before you take your seat.”

  “We’re sorry, Miss Ingalls,” Martha said. “We didn’t know it would take so long.”

  “Breaking a path is hard work, I know,” said Laura, and suddenly she and Martha were smiling to each other, a friendly smile that m
ade Laura feel as if teaching school were easy. She said, “Second Reader class, rise. Pass to the front.” And Ruby, the Second Reader class, rose and came to stand before her.

  The whole morning went smoothly. At noon, Ruby came to Laura’s desk and shyly offered her a cookie. After dinners were eaten from the dinner pails, Clarence asked her to come out and snowball, and Martha said, “Please do. Then we will have three on a side.”

  Laura was so pleased to be asked, and so eager to be out in the sunshine and clean snow, that she went. It was great fun. She and Martha and Ruby fought against Charles, Clarence, and Tommy. The air was full of snowballs. Clarence and Laura were quickest of all, dodging and scooping and molding the snow with their mittened hands and throwing and dodging again. Laura was glowing warm, and laughing, when a great burst of snow exploded in her eyes and her open mouth and plastered her whole face.

  “Oh gee, I didn’t mean to,” she heard Clarence saying.

  “Yes, you did! It was a fair hit,” Laura answered, blindly rubbing her eyes.

  “Here, let me; stand still,” he said. He took hold of her shoulder as if she were Ruby, and wiped her face with the end of her muffler.

  “Thank you,” Laura said. But she knew that she must not play any more. She was too small and too young; she would not be able to keep her pupils in order if she played games with them.

  That very afternoon Clarence pulled Martha’s hair. Her brown braid whisked across his desk as she turned her head, and he caught it and gave it a tug.

  “Clarence,” Laura said, “Do not disturb Martha. Give your attention to your lessons.”

  He gave her a friendly grin that said as plainly as words, “All right, if you say so; I don’t have to.”

  To her horror, Laura almost smiled. Barely in time, she kept her look stern. Now she was sure that she would have trouble with Clarence.

  Wednesday was gone. There were only Thursday and Friday. Laura tried not to expect that Pa would come for her, but she could not stop hoping. It would be so like Pa to come and save her from a miserable two days in Mrs. Brewster’s house. But of course he did not know how miserable it was. She must not expect him. But surely he might come, if the weather were good. If he came, there were only two more evenings to endure, and then—Friday night at home! Still she did not expect him; she must not, or she would be so disappointed if he did not come. They were missing her at home, she knew; if the weather were pleasant, surely he would come.