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《Little HOUSE in the BIG WOODS》
Chapter 1: LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS
O N C E upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wissin, in a little gray house made of logs. The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.
Wolves lived in the Big Woods, and bears, and huge wild cats. Muskrats and mink and otter lived by the streams. Foxes had dens in the hills and deer roamed everywhere.
To the east of the little log house, and to the West, there were miles upon miles of trees, and only a few little log houses scattered far apart in the edge of the Big Woods.
So far as the little girl could see, there was only the otle house where she lived with her Father and Mother, her sister Mary and baby sister Carrie. A wagon track ran before the house, turning and twisting out of sight in the woods where the wild animals lived, but the little girl did not know where it went, nor what might be at the end of it.
The little girl was named Laura and she called her father, Pa, and her mother, Ma. In those days and in that place, children did not say Father and Mother, nor Mamma and Papa, as they do now.
At night, when Laura lay awake irundle bed she listened and could not hear anything at all but the sound of the trees whispering together.
Sometimes, far away in the night, a wolf howled. Then he came nearer, and howled again.
It was a scary sound. Laura khat wolves would eat little girls. But she was safe ihe solid log walls. Her fathers gun hung over the door and good old Jack, the brindle bulldog, lay on guard before it. Her father would say, Go to sleep, Laura. Jack wohe wolves in. So Laura snuggled uhe covers of the trundle bed, close beside Mary, ao sleep. One night her father picked her tip out of bed and carried her to the window so藏书网 that she might see the wolves. There were two of them sitting in front of the house. They looked like shaggy dogs. They poiheir the big, bright moon, and howled.
Jack paced up and down before the drowling. The hair stood up along his bad he showed his sharp, fierce teeth to the wolves. They howled, but they could not get in.
The house was a fortable house. Upstairs there was a large attic, pleasant to play ihe rain drummed on the roof. Downstairs was the small bedroom, and the big room. The bed-; room had a window that closed with a wooden shutter. The big room had two windows with glass in the panes, and it had two doors, a front, door and a back door.
All around the house was a crooked rail feo keep the bears and the deer away.
In the yard in front of the house were two beautiful big oak trees. Every m as soon as she was awake Laura ran to look out of the window, and one m she saw in each of the big trees a dead deer hanging from a branch.
Pa had shot the deer the day before and Laura had been asleep when he brought them home at night and hung them high irees so the wolves could not get the meat.
That day Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary had fresh venison for dinner. It was so good that Laura wished they could eat it all. But most of the meat must be salted and smoked and packed away to be eaten in the winter.
For winter was ing. The days were shorter, and frost crawled up the window pa night. Soon the snow would e. Then the log house would be almost buried in snowdrifts, and the lake and the streams would freeze. Iter cold weather Pa could not be sure of finding any wild game to shoot for meat.
The bears would be hidden away in their dens where they slept soundly all winter long. The squirrels would be curled in their s in hollow trees, with their furry tails ed snugly around their he deer and the rabbits would be shy and swift. Even if Pa could get a deer, it would be poor and thin, not fat and plump as deer are in the fall.
Pa might hunt alone all day iter cold, in the Big Woods covered with snow, and e home at night with nothing for Ma and Mary and Laura to eat.
So as much food as possible must be stored away itle house before winter came.
Pa skihe deer carefully and salted and stretched the hides, for he would make soft leather of them. The up the meat, and sprinkled salt over the pieces as he laid them on a board.
Standing on end in the yard was a tall length cut from the trunk of a big hollow tree. Pa had driven nails inside as far as he could reach from ead. Theood it up, put a little roof over the top, and cut a little door on one side he bottom. On the piece that he cut out he fastened leather hiheted it into place, and that was the little door, with the bark still on it.
After the deer meat had been salted several days, Pa cut a hole he end of each pied put a string through it. Laura watched him do this, and theched him hang the meat on the nails in the hollow log.
He reached up through the little door and hu on the nails, as far up as he could reach. The a ladder against the log, climbed up to the top, moved the roof to one side, and reached down io ha on those nails.
Then Pa put the roof back again, climbed down the ladder, and said to Laura:
"Ruo the chopping blod fetch me some of those green hickory chips-new, , white ones.”
So Laura ran to the block where Pa chopped wood, and filled her apron with the fresh, sweet smelling chips.
Just ihe little door in the hollow log Pa built a fire of tiny bits of bark and moss, and he laid some of the chips on it very carefully.
Instead of burning quickly, the green chips smoldered and filled the hollow log with thick, choking smoke. Pa shut the door, and a little smoke squeezed through the crack around it and a little smoke came out through the roof, but most of it was shut in with the meat.
"Theres nothier than good hickory smoke," Pa said. "That will make good venison that will keep anywhere, in aher.”
Theook his gun, and slinging his ax on his shoulder he went away to the clearing to cut down some more trees.
Laura and Ma watched the fire for several days. When smoke stopped ing, through the cracks, Laura would bring more hickory chips and Ma would put them on the fire uhe meat. All the time there was a little smell of smoke in the yard, and when the door ened a thick, smoky, meaty smell came out.
At last Pa said the venison had smoked long enough. Then they let the fire go out, and Pa took all the strips and pieeat out of the hollow tree. Ma ed each pieeatly in paper and hung them iic where they would keep safe and dry.
One m Pa went away before daylight with the horses and wagon, and that night he came home with a wagonload of fish. The big wagon box iled full, and some of the fish were as big as Laura. Pa had goo Lake Pepin and caught them all with a .
Ma a cut large slices of flaky white fish, without one bone, for Laura and Mary. They all feasted on the good, fresh fish. All they did fresh was salted down in barrels for the winter.
Pa owned a pig. It ran wild in the Big Woods, living on as and nuts and roots. Now he caught it and put it in a pen made of logs, to fatten. He would butcher it as soon as the weather was cold enough to keep the pork frozen.
Laura woke up and heard the pig squealing. Pa jumped out of bed, snatched his gun from the wall, and ran outdoors. Then Laura heard the gun go off, owice.
When Pa came back, he told what had happened. He had seen a big black bear standing beside the pigpen. The bear was reag into the pen to grab the pig, and the pig was running and squealing. Pa saw this iarlight and he fired quickly. But the light was dim and in his haste he missed the bear. The bear ran away into the woods, not hurt at all.
Laura was sorry Pa did not get the bear. She liked bear meat so much. Pa was sorry, too, but he said: "Anyway, I saved the ba.”
The garden behind the little house had been growing all summer. It was so he house that the deer did not jump the fend cat the vegetables in the daytime, and at night Jack kept them away. Sometimes in the m there were little hoof-prints among the carrots and the cabbages. But Jacks tracks were there, too, and the deer had jumped right out again.
Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had e.
Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops, and then were hung iic beside wreaths of red peppers strung on threads. The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in e and yellow and green heaps iics ers.
The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves.
Then one day Uncle Henry came riding out of the Big Woods. He had e to help Pa butcher. Mas big butcher knife was already sharpened, and Uncle Henry had brought Aunt Pollys butcher knife.
he pigpen Pa and Uncle Henry built -a bonfire, aed a great kettle of water over it. Wheer was boiling they went to kill the hog. Then Laura ran and hid her head on the bed and stopped her ears with her fingers so she could not hear the hog squeal.
"It doesnt hurt him, Laura," Pa said. "We do it so quickly." But she did not want to hear him squeal.
In a minute. she took one finger cautiously out of an ear, and listehe hog had stopped squealing. After that, Butchering Time was great fun.
It was such a busy day, with so much to see and do. Uncle Henry and Pa were jolly, and there would be spare-ribs for or dinner, and Pa had promised Laura and Mary the bladder and the pigs tail.
As soon as the hog was dead Pa and Uncle Henry lifted it up and down in the boiling water till it was well scalded. Then they laid it on a board and scraped it with their knives, and all the bristles came off. After that they hung the hog *in a tree, took out the insides, a it hanging to cool.
When it was cool they took it down and cut it up. There were hams and shoulders, side meat and spare-ribs and belly. There was the heart and the liver and the tongue, and the head to be made into headcheese, and the dish-pan full of bits to be made into sausage.
The meat was laid on a board in the back-door shed, and every piece rinkled with salt. The hams and the shoulders were put to pickle in brine, for they would be smoked, like the venison, in the hollow log.
"You t beat hickory-cured ham," Pa said.
He was blowing up the bladder. It made a little white balloon, aied the end tight with a string and gave it to Mary and Laura to play with. They could throw it into the air and spat it bad forth with their hands.
Or it would bounce along the ground and they could kick it. But eveer fun than a balloon was the pigs tail.
Pa ski for them carefully, and into the large ehrust a sharpeick. Ma opehe front of the cookstove and raked hot coals out into the iroh. Then Laura and Mary took turns holding the pigs tail over the coals.
It sizzled and fried, and drops of fat dripped off it and blazed on the coals. Ma spri with salt. Their hands and their faces got very hot, and Laura burned her finger, but she was so excited she did not care. Roasting the pigs tail was such fun that it was hard to play fair, taking turns.
At last it was do was nicely browned all over, and how good it smelled! They carried it into the yard to cool it, and even before it was cool enough they began tasting it and burheir tongues.
They ate every little bit of meat off the bones, and then they gave the boo Jack. And that was the end of the pigs tail. There would not be another oill year.
Uncle Henry went home after dinner, and Pa went away to his work in the Big Woods. But for Laura and Mary and Ma, Butchering Time had only begun. There was a great deal for Ma to do, and Laura and Mary helped her.
All that day and the , Ma was trying out the lard in big iron pots on the cookstove. Laura and Mary carried wood and watched the fire. It must be hot, but not too hot, or the lard would burn. The big pots simmered and boiled, but they must not smoke. From time to time Ma skimmed out the brown crags. She put them in a cloth and squeezed out every bit of the lard, and the the crags away. She would use them to flavor johnny-cake later.
Crags were very good to eat, but Laura and Mary could have only a taste. They were too rich for little girls, Ma said.
Ma scraped and ed the head carefully, and then she boiled it till all the meat fell off the bones. She chopped the meat fih her chopping knife in the wooden bowl, she seaso with pepper and salt and spices. Then she mixed the pot-liquor with it, a away in a pan to cool. When it was cool it would cut in slices, and that was headcheese.
The little pieeat, lean and fat, that had the large pieces, Ma chopped and, chopped until it was all chopped fine. She seaso with salt and pepper and with dried sage leaves from the garden. Then with her hands she tossed and tur until it was well mixed, and she molded it into balls. She put the balls in a pan out in the shed, where they would freeze and be good to eat all wihat was the sausage.
When Butchering Time was over, there were the sausages and the headcheese, the big jars of lard and the keg of white salt-pork out in the shed, and iig the smoked hams and shoulders.
The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long wihe pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic.
Laura and Mary must play in the house now, for it was cold outdoors and the brown leaves were all falling from the trees. The fire in the cookstove never went out. At night Pa ba with ashes to keep the coals alive till m.
The attic was a lovely place to play. The large, round, colored pumpkins made beautiful chairs and tables. The red peppers and the onions dang.99lib.
led overhead. The hams and the venison hung in their paper ings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for or medie, gave the place a dusty spicy smell.
Often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But iic Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cosy.
Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named le. Laura had only a cob ed in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasnt Susans fault that she was only a cob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold le, but she did it only when Susan couldnt see.
The best times of all were at night. After supper Pa brought his traps in from the shed to grease them by the fire. He rubbed them bright and greased the hinges of the jaws and the springs of the pans with a feather dipped in bears grease.
There were small traps and middle-sized traps and great bear traps with teeth in their jaws that Pa said would break a mans leg if they shut on to it.
While he greased the traps, Pa told Laura and Mary little jokes and stories, -and afterward he would play his fiddle.
The doors and windows were tightly shut, and the cracks of the window frames stuffed with cloth, to keep out the cold. But Black Susan, the cat, came a as she pleased, day and night, through the swinging door of the cat-hole itom of the front door. She alway99lib.t>s went very quickly, so the door would not catch her tail, when it fell shut behind her.
One night when Pa was greasing the traps he watched Black Susan e in, and he said:
"There was once a man who had two cats, a big cat and a little cat.”
Laura and Mary ran to lean on his knees ahe rest.
"He had two cats," Pa repeated, "a big cat and a little cat. So he made a big cat-hole in his door for the big cat. And then he made a little cat-hole for the little cat.”
There Pa stopped.
"But why couldnt the little cat-" Mary began.
"Because the big cat would," Laura interrupted. "Laura, that is very rude. You must never interrupt," said Pa. "But I see," he said, "that either one of you has more sehan the man who cut the two cat holes in his door." Then he laid away the traps, aook his fiddle out of its box and began to play. That was the best time of all.
Chapter 2: Winter DAYS and Winter NIGHTS
THE first snow came, and the bitter cold. Every m Pa took his gun and his traps and was gone all day in the Big Woods, setting the small traps for muskrats and mink along the creeks, the middle-sized traps for foxes and wolves in the Woods. He set out the big bear traps hoping to get a fat bear before they all went into their dens for the winter.
One m he came back, took the horses and sled, and hurried away again. He had shot a bear. Laura and Mary jumped tip and down and clapped their hands, they were so glad. Mary shouted:
"I want the drumstick! I want the drumstick!
Mary did not know how big a bears drumstick is.
When Pa came back he had both a bear and a pig in the wagon. He had been going through the Woods, with a big bear trap in his hands and the gun on his shoulder, when he walked around a big piree covered with snow, and the bear was behind the tree.
The bear had just killed the pig and ig it up to eat it. Pa said the bear was standing up on its hind legs, holding the pig in its paws just as though they were hands.
Pa shot the bear, and there was no way of knowing where the pig came from nor whose pig it was.
"So I just brought home the ba," Pa said.
There lenty of fresh meat to last for a long time. The days and the nights were so cold that the pork in a box and the bear meat hanging itle shed outside the back door were solidly frozen and did not thaw.
When Ma wanted fresh meat for dinner Pa took the ax and cut off a k of frozen bear meat or pork. But the sausage balls, or the salt pork, or the smoked hams and the venison, Ma could get for herself from the shed or the attic.
The snow kept ing till it was drifted and banked against the house. In the ms the window panes were covered with frost iiful pictures of trees and flowers and fairies. Ma said that Jack Frost came in the night and made the pictures, while everyone was asleep. Laura thought that Jack Frost was a little man all snowy white, wearing a glittering white pointed cap and soft white knee--boots made of deer-skin. His coat was white and his mittens were white, and he did not carry a gun on his back, but in his hands he had shining sharp tools with which he carved the pictures.
Laura and Mary were allowed to take Mas thimble and made pretty patterns of circles in the frost on the glass. But they never spoiled the pictures that Jack Frost had made in the night.
When they put their mouths close to the pane and blew their breath on it, the white frost melted and ran in drops down the glass. Then they could see the drifts of snow outdoors and the great trees standing bare and black, making thin blue shadows on the white snow.
Laura and Mary helped Ma with the work.
Every m there were the dishes to wipe; Mary wiped more of them than Laura because she was bigger, but Laura always wiped carefully her own little cup and plate.
By the time the dishes were all wiped a away, the trundle bed was aired. Then, standing one on each side, Laura and Mary straightehe covers, tucked them in well at the foot and the sides, plumped up the pillout them in place. Then Ma pushed the trundle bed into its plader the big bed.
After this was done, Ma began the work that beloo that day. Each day had its own proper work. Ma used to say:
"Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday.”
Laura liked the ing and the baking days best of all the week.
In wihe cream was not yellow as it was in Summer, and butter ed from it was white and not so pretty. Ma liked everything oable to be pretty, so in the wiime she colored the butter.
After she had put the cream iall crockery a he stove to warm, she washed and scraped a long e-colored carrot. Then she grated it otom of
the old, leaky tin pan that Pa had punched full of nail-holes for her. Ma rubbed the carrot across the roughness until she had rubbed it all through the holes, and when she lifted up the pan, there was a soft, juicy mound of grated carrot.
She put this in a little pan of milk oove and when the milk was hot she poured milk and carrot into a cloth bag. Then she squeezed the bright yellow milk into the , where it colored all the cream. Now the butter would be yellow.
Laura and Mary were allowed to eat the carrot 1 after the milk had been squeezed out. Mary thought she ought to have the larger share because she was older, and Laura said she should have it because she was littler. But Ma said they must divide it evenly. It was very good.
When the cream was ready, Ma scalded the long wooden -dash, put it in the , and dropped the wooden -cover over it. The -cover had a little round hole in the middle 9 and Ma moved the dash up and down, up and down, through the hole.
She ed for a long time. Mary could sometimes while Ma rested, but the dash was too heavy for Laura.
At first the splashes of cream showed thid smooth around the little hole. After a long time, they began to look grainy. Then Ma ed more slowly, and on the dash there began to appear tiny grains of yellow butter.
When Ma took off the -cover, there was the butter in a golden lump, drowning itermilk. Then Ma took out the lump with a wooden paddle, into a wooden bowl, and she washed it many times in cold water, turning it over and over and w it with the paddle until the water ran clear. After that she salted it.
Now came the best part of the ing. Ma molded the butter. On the loose bottom of the wooden butter-mold was carved the picture of a strawberry with two strawberry leaves.
With the paddle Ma packed butter tightly into the mold until it was full. Theur upside-down over a plate, and pushed on the handle of the loose bottom. The little, firm pat of golden butter came out, with the strawberry and its leaves molded oop.
Laura and Mary watched, breathless, one on each side of Ma, while the golden little butterpats, each with its strawberry oop, dropped on to the plate as Ma put all the butter through the mold. Then Ma gave them each a drink of good, fresh buttermilk on Saturdays, when Ma made the bread, they each had a little piece of dough to make into a little loaf. They might have a bit of cookie dough, too, to make little cookies, and once Laura even made a pie in her patty-pan.
After the days work was done, Ma sometimes cut paper dolls for them. She cut the dolls out of stiff white paper, and drew the faces with a pencil. Then from bits of colored paper she cut dresses and hats, ribbons and laces, so that Laura and Mary could dress their dolls beautifully.
But, the best time of all was at night, when Pa came home.
He would e in from his tramping through the snowy woods with tiny icicles hanging on the ends of his mustaches. He would hang his gun on the wall over the door, thr..ow off his fur cap and coat and mittens, and call: "Wheres my little half -pint of sweet cider half drunk up? “
That was Laura, because she was so small.
Laura and Mary would run to climb on his knees and sit there while he warmed himself by the fire. Then he would put on his coat and cap and mittens again and go out to do the chores and bring iy of wood for the fire.
Sometimes, when Pa had walked his trap-lines quickly because the traps were empty, or when he had got some game soohan usual, he would e home early. Then he would have time to play with Laura and Mary.
One game they loved was called mad dog. Pa would run his fihrough his thick, brown hair, standing it all up on end. Then he dropped on all fours and, growling, he chased Laura and Mary all around the room, trying to get them ered where they could away.
They were quick at dodging and running, but once he caught them against the woodbox, behind the stove. They could past Pa, and there was no other way out.
Then Pa growled so terribly, his hair was so wild and his eyes so fierce that it all seemed real. Mary was shtehat she could not move. But as Pa came nearer Laura screamed, and with a wild leap and a scramble she went over the woodbox, dragging Mary with her.
And at ohere was no mad dog at all. There was only Pa standing there with his blue eyes shining, looking at Laura.
"Well!" he said to her. "Youre only a little half-pint of cider half drunk up, but by Jinks! Youre as strong as a little French horse!
"You shouldnt frighten the children so Charles," Ma said. "Look how big their eyes are.
Pa looked, and theook down his fiddle. He began to play and sing.
"Yankee Doodle went to town, He wore his striped trousies, He swore he couldhe town, There was so many houses.”
Laura and Mary fot all about the mad dog.
"And there he saw some great big guns, Big as a log of maple, And every time they turned em round, It took two yoke of cattle.
"And every time they fired em off, It took a horn of powder, It made a noise like fathers gun, Only a nation louder.”
Pa was keeping time with his foot, and Laura clapped her hands to the music when he sang, “And Ill sing Yankee Doodle-de-do, And Ill sing Yankee Doodle, And Ill sing Yankee Doodle-de-do, And Ill sing Yankee Doodle!”
All alone in the wild Big Woods, and the snow, and the cold, the little was warm and snug and cosy. Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie were fortable and happy there, especially at night.
Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susa lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace.
Ma sat in her rog chair, sewing by the light of the lamp oable. The lamp was bright and shiny. There was salt itom of its glass bowl with the keroseo keep the kerosene from exploding, and there were bits of red flannel among the salt to make it pretty. It retty.
Laura loved to look at the lamp, with its glass ey so and sparkling, its yellow flame burning so steadily, and its bowl of clear kerosene colored red by the bits of flannel. She loved to look at the fire in the fireplace, flickering and ging all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and h blue over the golden and ruby coals.
And then, Pa told stories. When Laura and Mary begged him for a story, he would take them on his knees and tickle their faces with his long whiskers until they laughed aloud. His eyes were blue and merry.
One night Pa looked at Black Susan, stretg herself before the fire and running her claws out and in, and he said:
"Do you know that a panther is a cat? a great, big, wild cat?”
"No," said Laura.
"Well, it is, said Pa. "Just imagine Black Susan bigger than Jack, and fiercer than Jack when he growls. Then she would b.
nt have been out in the Big Woods after dark, and you wouldnt have been scared by a screech-owl.
Chapter 4: CHRISTMAS
CHRISTMAS was ing.
The little log house was almost buried in snow. Great drifts were banked against the walls and windows, and in the m when Pa opehe 藏书网door, there was a wall of snow as high as Lauras head. Pa took the shovel and shoveled it away, and then he shoveled a path to the barn, where the horses and the cows were snug and warm in their stalls.
The days were clear and bright. Laura and Mary stood on chairs by the window and looked out across the glittering snow at the glittering trees. Snoiled all along their bare, dark branches, and it sparkled in the sunshine. Icicles hung from the eaves of the house to the snowbanks, great Icicles as large at the top as Lauras arm. They were like glass and full of sharp lights.
Pas breath hung in the air like smoke, when he came along the path from the barn. He breathed it out in clouds and it froze in white frost on his mustache and beard.
When he came in, stamping the snow from his boots, and caught Laura up in a bears hug against his cold, big coat, his mustache was beaded with little drops of melting frost.
Every night he was busy, w on a large piece of board and two small pieces. He whittled them with his knife, he rubbed them with sand paper and with the palm of his hand, until when Laura touched them they felt soft and smooth as silk.
Then with his sharp jaife he worked at them, cutting the edges of the large oo little peaks and towers, with a large star carved on the very tallest point. He cut little holes through the wood. He cut the holes in shapes of windows, and little stars, and crest moons, and circles. All around them he carved tiny leaves, and flowers, and birds.
One of the little boards he shaped in a lovely curve, and around its edges he carved leaves and flowers and stars, and through it he cut crest moons and curlicues.
Around the edges of the smallest board he carved a tiny fl vine.
He made the ti shavings, cutting very slowly and carefully, making whatever he thought would be pretty.
At last he had the pieces finished and one night he fitted them together. When this was dohe large piece was a beautifully carved back for a smooth little shelf across its middle. The large star was at the very top of it. The curved piece supported the shelf underh, and it was carved beautifully, too. And the little vine ran around the edge of the shelf.
Pa had made this bracket for a Christmas present for Ma. He hung it carefully against the log wall between the windows, and Ma stood her little a woman on the shelf.
The little a woman had a a bo on her head, and a curls hung against her a neck. Her a dress was laced across in front, and she wore a pale pink a apron and little gilt a shoes. She was beautiful, standing on the shelf with flowers and leaves and birds and moons carved all around her, and the large star at the very top.
Ma was busy all day long, cooking good things for Christmas. She baked salt-rising bread and ryenlnjun bread, and Swedish crackers, and a huge pan of baked beans, with salt pork and molasses. She baked vinegar pies and dried-apple pies, and filled a big jar with cookies, and she let Laura and Mary lick the cake spoon.
One m she boiled molasses and sugar together until they made a thick syrup, and Pa brought in two pans of , white snow from outdoors. Laura and Mary each had a
pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup in little streams on to the snow.
They made circles, and curlicues, and squiggledy things, and these harde ond were dy. Laura and Mary might eat one piece each, but the rest was saved for Christmas Day.
All this was done because Aunt Eliza and Uer and the cousins, Peter and Alid Ella, were ing to spend Christmas.
The day before Christmas they came. Laura and Mary heard the gay ringing of sleigh bells, growing louder every moment, and then the big bobsled came out of the woods and drove up to the gate. Aunt Eliza and Uer and the cousins were in it, all covered up, under blas and robes and buffalo skins.
They were ed up in so many coats and mufflers and veils and shawls that they looked like big, shapeless bundles.
When they all came in, the little house was full and running over. Black Susan ran out and hid in the barn, but Jack leaped in circles through the snow, barking as though he would op. Now there were cousins to play with!
As soon as Aunt Eliza had uned them, Peter and Alid Ella and Laura and Mary began to run and shout. At last Aunt Eliza told them to be quiet. Then Alice said: "Ill tell you what lets do. Lets make pictures.”
Alice said they must go outdoors to do it, and Ma thought it was too cold for Laura to play outdoors. But when she saw how disappointed Laura was, she said she might go, after all, for a little while. She put on Lauras coat and mittens and the warm cape with the hood, and ed a muffler around her neck, a her go.
Laura had never had so much fun. All m she played outdoors in the snow with Alid Ella aer and Mary, making pictures. The way they did it was this:
Eae by, herself climbed up on a stump, and then all at once, holding their arms out wide, they fell off the stumps into the soft, deep snow. They fell flat on their faces. Theried to get up without spoiling the marks they made when they fell. If they did it well, there in the snow were five holes, shaped almost exactly like four little girls and a boy, arms and legs and all. They called these their pictures.
They played so hard all day that when night came they were too excited to sleep. But they must sleep, or Santa Claus would not e. So they hung their stogs by the fireplace, and said their prayers, ao bed-Alid Ella and Mary and Laura all in one big bed on the floor.
Peter had the trundle bed. Aunt Eliza and Uer were going to sleep in the big bed, and another bed was made oic floor for Pa and Ma. The buffalo robes and all the blas had been brought in from Uers sled, so there were enough covers for everybody.
Pa and Ma and Aunt Eliza and Uer sat by the fire, talking. And just as Laura was drifting off to sleep, she heard Uer say:
"Eliza had a narrow squeak the other day, when I was away at Lake City. You know Prihat big dog of mine? “
Laura was wide awake at once. She always liked to hear about dogs. She lay still as a mouse, and looked at the fire-light flickering on the log walls, and listeo Uer.
"Well," Uer said, "early in the m Eliza started to the spring to get a pail of water, and Prince was following her. She got to the edge of the ravine, where the path goes down to the spring, and all of a sudden Pri his teeth in the back of her skirt and pulled.
"You know what a big dog he is. Eliza scolded him, but he would go, and hes so big and strong she could away from him. He kept bag and pulling, till he tore a piece out of her skirt.
"It was my blue print," Aunt Eliza said to Ma.
"Dear me! " Ma said.
"He t９９lib?ore a big piece right out of the back of it," Aunt Eliza said. "I was so mad I could have whipped him for it. But he growled at me.”
"Prince growled at you? " Pa said.
"Yes," said Aunt Eliza.
"So thearted on again toward the spring," Uer went on. "But Prince jumped into the path ahead of her and s her. He paid no attention to her talking and scolding. He just kept on showing his teeth and snarling, and wheried to get past him he kept in front of her and s her. That scared her.”
"I should think it would! " Ma said.
"He was so savage, I thought he was going to bite me, said Aunt Eliza. "I believe he would have.”
"I never heard of such a thing! " said Ma. "What oh did you do?”
"I turned right around and ran into the house where the children were, and slammed the door, Aunt Eliza answered.
"Of course Prince was savage with strangers," said Uer. "But he was always so kind to Eliza and the children I felt perfectly safe to leave them with him. Eliza couldnt uand it at all. "After she got into the house he kept pag around it and growling. Every time she started to open the door he jumped at her and snarled.”
"Had he gone mad?" said Ma.
"Thats what I thought," Aunt Eliza said. "I didnt know what to do. There I was, shut up in the house with the children, and not daring to go out. And we didnt have any water. I couldnt eve any snow to melt. Every time I opehe door so much as a crack, Pried like he would tear me to pieces.”
"How long did this go on?" Pa asked.
"All day, till late iernoon," Aunt Eliza said. "Peter had taken the gun, or I would have shot him.”
"Along late iernoon," Uer said, "he got quiet, and lay down in front of the door. Eliza thought he was asleep, and she made up her mind to try to slip past him ao the spring for or some water.
"So she opehe door very quietly, but of course he woke up right away. When he saw she had the water pail in her hand, he got up and walked ahead of her to the spring, just the same as usual. And there, all around the spring in the snow, were the fresh tracks of a panther.”
"The tracks were as big as my hand," said Aunt Eliza.
"Yes, Uer said, "he was a big fellow. His tracks were the biggest I ever saw. He would have got Eliza sure, if Prince had let her go to the spring in the m. I saw the tracks. He had been lying up in that big oak over the spring, waiting for some animal to e there for water. Undoubtedly he would have dropped down on her.
"Night was ing on, when she saw the tracks, and she didnt waste any time getting back to the house with her pail of water. Prince followed close behind her, looking bato the ravine now and then.”
"I took him into the house with me," Aunt Eliza said, "and we all stayed iill Peter came home.”
"Did you get him?" Pa asked Uer.
"No," Uer said. "I took my gun and hunted all round the place, but I couldnt find him. I saw some more of his tracks. Hed gone on north, farther into the Big Woods.”
Alid Ella and Mary were all wide awake now, and Laura put her head uhe covers and whispered to Alice, "My! werent you scared?”
Alice whispered back that she was scared, but Ella was scareder. And Ella whispered that she washer, any such thing.
"Well, anyway, you made more more fuss about being thirsty," Alice whispered.
They lay there whispering about it till Ma said: "Charles, those children never will get to sleep unless you play for them." So Pa got his fiddle.
The room was still and warm and full of firelight. Mas shadow, and Aunt Elizas and Uers were big and quivering on the walls in the flickering firelight, and Pas fiddle sang merrily to itself.
It sang "Money Musk," and "The Red Heifer," "The Devils Dream," and "Arkansas Traveler." And Laura went to sleep while Pa and the fiddle were both softly singing:
"My darling Nelly Gray, they have taken you away, And Ill never see my darling any more ...." In the m they all woke up almost at the same moment. They looked at their stogs, and something was in them. Santa Claus had been there. Alid Ella and Laura in their red flannel nightgoeter in his red flannel nightshirt, all ran shouting to see what he had brought, In each stog there air ht red mittens, and there was a long, flat stick of red and-white-striped peppermint dy, all beautifully notched along each side.
They were all so happy they could hardly speak at first. They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents. But Laura was happiest of all. Laura had a rag doll.
She was a beautiful doll. She had a face of white cloth with black button eyes. A black pencil had made her eyebrows, and her cheeks and her mouth were red with the ink made from pokeberries. Her hair was black yarn that had been knit and raveled, so that it was curly. She had little red flaogs and little black cloth gaiters for shoes, and her dress retty pink and blue calico.
She was so beautiful that Laura could not say a word. She just held her tight and fot everything else. She did not know that everyone was looking at her, till Aunt Eliza said:
Did you ever see such big eyes!”
The irls were not jealous because Laura had bbr>mittens, and dy, and a doll, because Laura was the littlest girl, except Baby Carrie and Aunt Elizas little baby, Dolly Varden. The babies were too small for dolls. They were so small they did not even know about Santa Claus. They just put their fingers in their mouths and wriggled because of all the excitement.
Laura sat down on the edge of the bed and held her doll. She loved her red mittens and she loved the dy, but she loved her doll best of all. She named her Charlotte.
Then they all looked at each others mittens, and tried on their oeter bit a large pied out of his stick of dy, but Alid Ella a Mary and Laura licked theirs, to make it last longer.
"Well, well!" Uer said. "Isnt there eveog with nothing but a swit it?”
My, my, have you all been such good children? “
But they didnt believe that Santa Claus could, really, have given any of them nothing but a switch. That happeo some children, but it couldnt happen to them. It was so hard to be good all the time, every day, for a whole year.
"You mustnt tease the childreer," Aunt Eliza said.
Ma said, "Laura, arent you going to let the irls hold your doll?" She meant, "Little girls must not be so selfish.”
So Laura let Mary take the beautiful doll, and then Alice held her a minute, and then Ella. They smoothed the pretty dress and admired the red flaogs and the gaiters, and the curly woolen hair. But Laura was glad when at last Charlotte was safe in her arms again.
Pa and Uer had each a pair of new, warm mittens, knit in little squares of red and white. Ma and Aunt Eliza had made them.
Aunt Eliza had brought Ma a large red apple stuck full of cloves. How good it smelled! And it would not spoil, for so many cloves would keep it sound and sweet.
Ma gave Aunt Eliza a little needle-book she had made, with bits of silk for covers and soft white flannel leaves into which to stick the needles. The flannel would keep the needles from rusting.
They all admired Mas beautiful bracket, and Aunt Eliza said that Uer had made one for her-of course, with different carving.
Santa Claus had not given them anything at all. Santa Claus did not give grown people presents but that was not because they had not been good.
Pa and Ma were good. It was because they were grown up, and grown people must give each other presents.
Then all the presents must be laid away for a little while. Peter went out with Pa and Uer to do the chores, and Alid Ella helped Aunt Eliza make the beds, and Laura and Mary set the table, while Ma got breakfast.
For breakfast there were pancakes, and Ma made a pancake man for eae of the children. Ma called eae in turn t her plate, and each could stand by the stove and watch, while with the spoonful of batter Ma put on the arms and the legs and the head. It was exg to watch her turn the whole little man over, quickly and carefully, on a hot griddle. When it was done, she put it smoking hot on the plate.
Peter ate the head off his man, right away. But Alid Ella and Mary and Laura ate theirs slowly in little bits, first the arms and legs and then the middle, saving the head for the last.
Today the weather was so cold that they could not play outdoors, but there were the new mittens to admire, and the dy to lick. And they all sat on the flether and looked at the pictures in the Bible, and the pictures of all kinds of animals and birds in Pas big green book. Laura kept Charlotte in her arms the whole time.
Then there was the Christmas dinner. Alice -and Ella aer and Mary and Laura did not say a word at table, for they khat children should be seen and not heard. But they did not o ask for sed helpings. Ma and Aunt Eliza kept their plates full ahem eat all the good things they could hold.
"Christmas es but once a year," said Aunt Eliza. Dinner was early, because Aunt Eliza, Uer and the cousins had such a long way to go.
"Best the horses do Uer said, well hardly make it home before dark.”
So as soon as they had eaten dinner, Uer and Pa went to put the horses to the sled, while Ma and Aunt Eliza ed up the cousins.
They pulled heavy woolen stogs over the woolen stogs and the shoes they were already wearing. They put on mittens and coats and warm hoods and shawls, and ed mufflers around their necks and thick woolen veils over their faces. Ma slipped piping hot baked potatoes into their pockets to keep their fingers warm, and Aunt Elizas flatirons were hot oove , ready to put at their feet in the sled. The blas and the quilts and the buffalo robes were warmed, too. So they all got into the big bobsled, cosy -and warm, and Pa tucked the last robe well in around them.
"Good-by! Good-by! " they called, and off they went, the horses trotting gaily and the sleigh bells ringing.
In just a little while the merry sound of the bells was gone, and Christmas was over. But what a happy Christmas it had been!
Chapter 5 SUNDAYS
NOW the winter seemed long. Laura and Mary began to be tired of staying always in the house. Especially on Sundays, the time went so slowly.
Every Sunday Mary and Laura were dressed from the skin out in their best clothes, with fresh ribbons in their hair. They were very , because they had their baths on Saturday night.
In the summer they were battled in water from the spring. But in the wiime Pa filled and heaped the washtub with snow, and on the cookstove it melted to water. Then close by the warm stove, behind a s made of a bla over two chairs, Ma bathed Laura, and thehed Mary.
Laura was bathed first, because she was littler than Mary. She had to go to bed early on Saturday nights, with Charlotte, because after she was bathed and put into her nightgown, Pa must empty the washtub and fill it with snow again for Marys bath. Then after Mary came to bed, Ma had her bath behind the bla, and then Pa had his. And they were all , for Sunday.
On Sundays Mary and Laura must not run or shout or be noisy in their play. Mary could not sew on her ch quilt, and Laura could not knit oiny mittens she was making for Baby Carrie. They might look quietly at their paper dolls, but they must not make anything new for them. They were not allowed to sew on doll clothes, not even with pins.
They must sit quietly and listen whileMa read Bible stories to them, or stories about lions and tigers and white bears from Pas big green book, The Wonders of the Animal World. They might look 藏书网at pictures, and they might hold their rag dolls nicely and talk to them. But there was nothing else they could do.
Laura liked best to look at the pictures in the big Bible, with its paper covers. Best of all was the picture of Adam naming the animals.
Adam sat on a rock, and all the animals and birds, big and little, were gathered around him anxiously waiting to be told what kind of animals they were. Adam looked so fortable. He did not have to be careful to keep his clothes ,because he had no clothes on. He wore only a skin around his middle.
"Did Adam have good clothes to wear on Sundays? " Laura asked Ma. "No," Ma said. "Poor Adam, all he had to wear was skins." Laura did not pity Adam. She wished she had nothing to wear but skins.
One Sunday after supper she could not bear it any longer. She began to play with Jack, and in a few minutes she was running and shouting. Pa told her to sit in her chair and be quiet, but when Laura sat down she began to cry and kick the chair with her heels.
"I hate Sunday! " she said.
Pa put down his book. "Laura," he said sternly, "e here.”
Her feet dragged as she went, because she knew she deserved a spanking. But when she reached Pa, he looked at her sorrowfully for a moment, and then took her on his knee and cuddled her against him. He held out his other arm to Mary, and said:
"Im going to tell you a story about when Grandpa was a boy.”
The Story of Grandpas Sled and the Pig "WHEN yrandpa was a boy, Laura, Sunday did not begin on Sunday m, as it does now. It began at sundown on Saturday night. Then everyoopped every kind of work or play.
"Supper was solemn. After supper, Grandpas father read aloud a chapter of the Bible, while everyo straight and still in his chair. Then they all k down, and their father said a long prayer. When he said, Amen, they got up from their knees and each took a dle ao bed. They must ght to bed, with no playing, laughing, or even talking.
"Sunday, m they ate a cold breakfast, because nothing could be cooked on Sunday. Then they all dressed in their best clothes and walked to church. They walked, because hitg up the horses was work, and no work could be done on Sunday.
"They must walk slowly and solemnly, looking straight ahead. They must not joke or laugh, or even smile. Grandpa and his two brothers and their father and mother walked ahead, and their father and Mother walked behind them.
"In church, Grandpa and his brothers must sit perfectly still for two long hours and listen to the sermon. They dared not fidget on the hard bench. They dared not swing their feet. They dared not turn their heads to look at the windows or the walls or the ceiling of the church. They must sit perfectly motionless, and never for or one instant take their eyes from the preacher.
"When church was over, they walked slowly home. They might talk on the way, but they must not talk loudly and they must never laugh or smile. At home they ate a cold dinner
which had been cooked the day before ore. Then all the long afternoon they must sit in a row on a bend study their catechism, until at last the su down and Sunday was over.
Noas home was about halfway down the side of a steep hill. The road went from the top of the hill to the front door, and in wi was the best place for sliding downhill that you possibly imagine.
"One week Grandpa and his two brothers, James and Gee, were making a new sled. They worked at it every minute of their playtime. It was the best sled they had ever made, and it was so long that all three of them could sit on it, one behind the other. They plao finish it in time to slide downhill Saturday afternoon. For every Saturday afternoon they had two or three hours to play.
"But that week their father was cutting down trees in the Big Woods. He was w hard and he kept the boys w with him. They did all the m chores by lantern-light and were hard at work in the woods when the sun came up, They worked till dark, and then there IVA-ere the chores to do, and after supper they had to go to bed so they could get up early in the m.
"They had no time to work on the sled until Saturday afternoon. Then they worked at it just as fast as they could, but they did fiill just as the su down, Saturday night.
"After the su down, they could not slide downhill, not even ohat would be breaking the Sabbath. So they put the sled in the go shed behind the house, to wait until Sunday was over.
"All the two long hours in churext day, while they kept their feet still and their eyes on the preacher, they were thinking about the sled. At home while they ate dihey couldnt think of anything else. After diheir father sat down to read the Bible, and Grandpa and James and Gee sat as still as mi their bench with their catechism. But they were thinking about the sled.
"The sun shone brightly and the snow was smooth and glittering on the road. they could see it through the window. It erfect day for sliding downhill. They looked at their catechism and they thought about the new sled, and it seemed that Sunday would never end.
"After a long time they heard a shey looked at their father, and they saw that his head had fallen against the back of his chair and he was fast asleep.
"Then James looked at Gee, and James got up from the bend tiptoed out of the room through the back dee looked at Grandpa and Gee tiptoed after James. And Grandpa looked fearfully at their father, but on tiptoe he followed Gee aheir father sn.
"They took their new sled a up to the top of the hill. They meant to slide down, just ohen they would put the sled away, and slip back to their bend the catechism before their father woke up.
James sat in front on the sled, then Gee, and then Grandpa, because he was the littlest. The sled started, at first slowly, then faster and faster. It was running, flying, down the long steep hill, but the boys dared not shout. They must slide silently past the house, without waking their father.
"There was no sound except the little whirr of the runners on the snow, and the wind rushing past.
"Then just as the sled was swooping toward the house, a big black pig stepped out of the woods. He walked into the middle of the road and stood there.
"The sled was going so fast it couldopped. There wasnt time to turn it. The sled went right uhe hog and picked him up. With a squeal he sat down on James, and he kept on squealing, long and loud and shrill, Squee-eeee-ee-ee! Squee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee! They flashed by the house, the pig sitting in front, then James, then Gee, then Grandpa, and they saw their father standing in the doorway looking at them. They couldnt stop, they couldnt hide, there was no time to say anything. Down the hill they went, the hog sitting on James and squealing all the way.
"At the bottom of the hill they stopped. The hog jumped off James and ran away into the woods, still squealing.
"The boys walked slowly and solemnly up the hill. They put the sled away. They sneaked into the house and slipped quietly to their places on the bench. Their father was reading his Bible. He looked up at them without saying a word.
"Then he went on reading, and they studied their catechism. "But 9９lib?when the su down and the Sabbath day was over, their father took them out to the woodshed and taheir jackets, first James, then Gee, then Grandpa.
"So you see, Laura and Mary," Pa said, you may find it hard to be good, but you should be glad that it isnt as hard to be good now as it was when Grandpa was a boy.”
"Did little girls have to be as good as that?" Laura asked, and Ma said: "It was harder for little girls. Because they had to behave like little ladies all the time, not only on Sundays. Little girls could never slide downhill, like boys. Little girls had to sit in the house and stit samplers.”
"Now run along a Ma put you to bed," said Pa, aook his fiddle out of its box.
Laura and Mary lay irundle bed and listeo the Sunday hymns, for even the fiddle must not sing the week-day songs on Sundays.
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me Pa sang, with the fiddle. Then he sang:
"Shall I be carried to the skies, On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody seas”
Laura began to float away on the musid then she heard a clattering noise, and there was Ma by the stove, getting breakfast. It was Monday m, and Sunday would not e again for a whole week.
That m when Pa came in to breakfast he caught Laura and said he must give her a spanking.
First he explaihat today was her birthday, and she would not grow properly year unless she had a spanking. And then he spanked so gently and carefully that it did not hurt a bit.
"Owo -three-four - five-six," he ted and spanked, slowly - One spank for each year, and at the last one big spank to grow on. Then Pa gave her a little wooden man he had whittled out of a stick, to be pany for Charlotte. Ma gave her five little cakes, one for each year that Laura had lived with her and Pa. And Mary gave her a new dress for Charlotte. Mary had made the dress herself, when Laura thought she was sewing on her patchwork quilt.
And that night, for a special birthday treat, Pa played "Pop Goes the Weasel" for her.
He sat with Laura and Mary close against his knees while he played. "Now watch," he said. "Watch, and maybe you see the weasel pop out this time." Then he sang:
"A penny for a spool of thread, Another for a needle, Thats the way the money goes Laura and Mary bent close, watg, for or they kneas the time.
"Pop! (said Pas finger oring)
Goes the weasel (sang the fiddle, plain as plain.)”
But Laura and Mary hadnt seen Pas finger make the string pop.
"Oh, please, please, do it again. they begged him. Pas blue eyes laughed, and the fiddle went on while he sang:
"All around the cobblers bench,
The monkey chased the weasel, The preacher kissed the cobblers wife, Pop! goes the weasel!”
They hadnt seen Pas fihat time, either.
He was so quick they could never catch him So they went laughing to bed and lay listening to Pa and the fiddle singing:
"There was an old darkey, And his name was Uned, And he died long ago, long ago.
There was no wool oop of his head, In the place where the wool ought to grow.
"His fingers were as long, As the e in the brake, His eyes they could hardly see, And he had h for to eat the hoe-cake, So he had to let the hoe-cake be.
"So hang up the shovel and the hoe, Lay down the fiddle and the bow, Theres no m?9９ｌib?ore work for old Uned, For hes gone where the good darkeys go.”
Chapter 6: TWO BIG BEARS
THEN one day Pa said that spring was ing In the Big Woods the snow was beginning to thaw. Bits of it dropped from the branches of the trees and made little holes in the softening snowbanks below. At noon all the big icicles along the eaves of the little house quivered and sparkled in the sunshine, and drops of water hung trembling at their tips.
Pa said he must go to town to trade the furs of the wild animals he had been trapping all winter.
So one evening he made a big bundle of them. There were so many furs that when they were packed tightly and tied together they made a bundle almost as big as Pa.
Very early one m Pa strapped the bundle of furs on his shoulders, and started to walk to town. There were so many furs to carry that he could not take his gun.
Ma was worried, but Pa said that by starting before sun-up and walking very fast all day he could get home again before dark.
The own was far away. Laura and Mary had never seen a town. They had never seen a store. They had never seewo houses standing together. But they khat in a town there were many houses, and a store full of dy and calid other wonderful things -powder, and shot, and salt, and store sugar.
They khat Pa would trade his furs to the storekeeper for beautiful things from town, and all day they were expeg the presents he would bring them. When the sun sank low above the treetops and no more drops fell from the tips of the icicles they began to watch eagerly for Pa.
The sun sank out of sight, the woods grew dark, and he did not e. Ma started supper ahe table, but he did not e. It was time to do the chores, and still he had not e.
Ma said that Laura might e with her while she milked the cow.
Laura could carry the lantern. So Laura put on her coat and Ma butto up.
And Laura put her hands into her red mittens that hung by a red yarn string around her neck, while Ma lighted the dle in the lantern.
Laura roud to be helping Ma with the milking, and she carried the lantern very carefully.
Its sides were of tin, with places cut in them for the dle-light to shihrough.
When Laura walked behind Ma oh to the barn, the little bits of dle-light from the lantern leaped all around her on the snow. The night was not yet quite dark. The woods were dark, but there was a gray light on the snowy stars. I path, and in the sky there were a few faint stars. The stars did not look as warm. and bright as the little lights that came from the lantern.
Laura was surprised to see the dark shape of Sukey, the brown cow, standing at the barnyard gate. Ma was surprised, too.
It was too early in the spring for Sukey to be let out in the Big Woods to eat grass. She lived in the barn. But sometimes on warm days Pa left the door of her stall open so she could e into the barnyard. Now Ma and Laura saw her behind the bars, waiting for them.
Ma went up to the gate, and pushed against it to open it. But it did not there was Sukey, standing against it. Ma said, "Sukey, get over! " She reached across the gate and slapped Sukeys shoulder.
Just theｐ://?９９ｌｉb.of the dang little bits of light from the lantern jumped between the bars of the gate, and Laura saw long, shaggy, black fur, and two little, glittering eyes.
Sukey had thin, short, brown fur. Sukey had large, gentle eyes.
Ma said, "Laura, walk back to the house.”
So Laura turned around and began to walk toward the house. Ma came behind her. When they had gone part way, Ma snatched her up, lantern and all, and ran. Ma ran with her into the house, and slammed the door. Then Laura said, "Ma, was it a bear?
"Yes, Laura," Ma said. "It was a bear.”
Laura began to cry. She hung on to Ma and sobbed, "Oh, will he eat Sukey? “
"No," Ma said, hugging her. "Sukey is safe in the barn. Think, Laura-all those big, heavy logs in the barn walls. And the door is heavy and solid) made to keep bears out. No, the bear ot get in a Sukey. “
Laura felt better then. "But he could have hurt us, couldnt he?" she asked.
"He didnt hurt us," Ma said. "You were a good girl, Laura, to do exactly as I told you, and to do it quickly, without asking why.”
Ma was trembling, and she began to laugh a little. "To think," she said, "Ive slapped a bear!
The supper oable for Laura and Mary. Pa had not e yet. He didnt e.
Laura and Mary were undressed, and they said their prayers and snuggled into the trundle bed.
Ma sat by the lamp, mending one of Pas shirts. The house seemed cold and still and strange, without Pa.
Laura listeo the wind in the Big Woods. All around the house the wi g as though it were lost in the dark and the cold. The wind sounded frightened.
Ma finished mending the shirt. Laura saw her fold it slowly and carefully. She smoothed it with her hand. Then she did a thing she had never done before. She went to the door and pulled the leather latch-string through its hole in the door, so that nobody could get in from outside unless she lifted the latch. She came and took Carrie, all limp and sleeping, out of the big bed.
She saw that Laura and Mary were still awake, and she said to them: "Go to sleep, girls. Everything is all right. Pa will be here in the m.”
Then she went back to her rog chair and sat there rog gently and holding Baby Carrie her arms.
She was sitting tip late, waiting for Pa, and Laura and Marv meant to stay awake, too, till he came. But at last they went to sleep.
In the m Pa was there. He had brought dy for Laura and Mary, and two pieces of pretty caliake them each a dress. Marys was a a-blue pattern on a white ground, and Lauras was dark red with little golden-brown dots on it. Ma had calico for a dress, too; it was brown, with a big, feathery white pattern all over it.
They were all happy because Pa had got such good prices for his furs that he could afford to get them such beautiful presents.
The tracks of the big bear were all around the barn, and there were marks of his claws on the walls. But Sukey and the horses were safe inside.
All that day the sun shohe snow melted, and little streams of water ran from the icicles, which all the time grew thinner. Before the suhat night, the bear tracks were only shapeless marks i, soft snow.
After supper Pa took Laura and Mary on his knees and said he had a ory to tell them.
The Story of Pa and the Bear in.9９ｌｉb? the Way When I went to towerday with the furs I found it hard walking in the soft snow. It took me a long time to get to town, and other men with furs had e in earlier to do their trading. The storekeeper was busy, and I had to wait until lie could look at my furs.
"Then we had tain about the price of eae, and then I had to pick out the things I wao take in trade.
"So it was nearly sundown before I could start home.
"I tried to hurry, but the walking was hard and I was tired, so I had not gone far before night came. And I was alone in the Big Woods without my gun.
"There were still six miles to walk, and I came along as fast as I could. The night grew darker and darker, and I wished for my gun, because I khat some of the bears had e out of their winter dens. I had seeracks when I went to town in the m.
"Bears are hungry and cross at this time of year; you know they have been sleeping in their dens all winter long with nothing to eat, and that makes them thin and angry when they wake up.
I did not want to meet one.
"I hurried along as quick as I could in the dark. By and by the stars gave a little light. It was still black as pitch where the woods were thick, but in the open places I could see, dimly. I could see the snowy road ahead a little way, and I could see the dark woods standing all around me. I was glad when I came into an open place where the stars gave me this faint light.
"All the time I was watg, as well as I could, for or bears. I was listening for or the sounds they make when they go carelessly through the bushes.
"Then I came again into an open place, and there, right in the middle of my road, I saw a big black bear.
"He was standing up on his hind legs, looking at me. I could see his eyes shine. I could see his pig-snout. I could even see one of his claws, iarlight.
"My scalp prickled, and my hair stood straight up. I stopped in my tracks, and stood still. The bear did not move. There he stood, looking at me.
"I k would do no good to try to go around him. He would follow me into the dark woods, where he could see better than I could. I did not want to fight a wiarved bear in the dark. Oh, how I wished for my gun!
"I had to pass that bear, to get home. I thought that if I could scare him, he might get out of the road a me go by. So I took a deep breath, and suddenly I shouted with all my might and ran at him, waving my arms.
"He didnt move.
I did not run very far toward him, I tell you!
I stopped and looked at him, aood looking at me. Then I shouted again. There he stood. I kept on shouting and waving my arms, but he did not budge.
"Well, it would do me no good to run away. There were other bears in the woods. I might meet one any time. I might as well deal with this one as with another. Besides, I was ing home to Ma and you girls. I would never get here, if I ran away from everything in the woods that scared me.
"So at last I looked around, and I got a good big club, a solid, heavy branch that had been broken from a tree by the weight of snow in the winter.
"I lifted it up in my hands, and I ran straight at that bear. I swung my club as hard as I could and brought it down, bang! on his head.
"And there he still stood, for he was nothing but a big, black, burump!
"I had passed it on my way to town that m. It wasnt a bear at all. I only thought it was a bear, because I had been thinking all the time about bears and being afraid Id meet one.”
"It really wasnt a bear at all?" Mary asked.
"No, Mary, it wasnt a bear at all. There I had been yelling, and dang, and waving my arms, all by myself in the Big Woods, trying to scare a stump! “
Laura said: "Ours was really a bear. But we were not scared, because we thought it was Sukey.
Pa did not say anything, but he hugged her tighter.
"Oo-oo! That bear might have eaten Ma and me all up!" Laura said, snuggling closer to him. "But Ma walked right up to him and slapped him, and he didnt do anything at all. Why didnt he do anything?
"I guess he was too surprised to do anything, Laura," Pa said. "I guess he was afraid, when the lantern shone in his eyes. And when Ma walked up to him and slapped him, he knew she wasnt afraid.”
"Well, you were brave, too," Laura said. "Even if it was only a stump,, you thought it was a bear. Youd have hit him on the head with a club, if he bad been a bear, wouldnt you, Pa?”
"Yes," said Pa, "I would. You see, I had to.”
Then Ma said it was bedtime. She helped Laura and Mary undress and button up their red flannel nightgowns. They k down by the trundle bed and said their prayers.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
Ma kissed them both, and tucked the covers in around them. They lay there awhile, looking at Mas smooth, parted hair and her hands busy with sewing in the lamplight. Her needle made little clig sounds against her thimble and thehread went softly, swish! through the pretty calico that Pa had traded furs for.
Laura looked at Pa, who was greasing his boots.
His mustaches and his hair and his long brown beard were silky in the lamplight, and the colors of his plaid jacket were gay. He whistled cheer fully while he worked, and then he sang:
"The birds were singing in the m, And the myrtle and the ivy were in bloom, And the suhe hills was a-dawning, "Twas then that I laid her iomb.”
It was a warm night. The fire had goo coals on the hearth, and Pa did not build it up. All around the little house, in the Big Woods, there were little sounds of falling snow, and from the eaves there was the drip, drip of the melting icicles.
In just a little while the trees would be putting out their baby leaves, all rosy and yelloale green, and there would be wild flowers and birds in the woods.
Then there would be no more stories by the fire at night, but all day long Laura and Mary would run and play among the trees, for it would be spring.
Chapter 7: The Sugar Snow
FOR days the sun shone and the weather was warm. There was no frost on the windows in the ms. All day the icicles fell one by one from the eaves with soft smashing and crag sounds in the snowbanks beh. The trees shook their wet, black branches, and ks of snow fell down.
When Mary and Laura pressed their noses against the cold window pahey could see the drip of water from the eaves and the bare branches of the trees. The snow did not glitter; it looked soft and tired. Uhe trees it itted where the c?９９ｌｉｂ.hunks of snow had fallen, and the banks beside the path were shrinking aling.
Then one day Laura saatch of bare ground in the yard. All day it grew bigger, and before night the whole yard was bare mud. Only the icy path was left, and the snowbanks along the path and the fend beside the woodpile.
"t I go out to play, Ma?" Laura asked, and Ma said:
"May, Laura.”
"May I go out to play?" she asked.
"You may tomorrow," Ma promised.
That night L藏书网aura woke up, shivering. The bed-covers felt thin, and her nose was icy cold. Ma was tug another quilt over her.
"Snuggle close to Mary," Ma said, "and youll get warm.”
In the m the house was warm from the stove, but when Laura looked out of the window she saw that the ground was covered with soft, thiow. All along the branches of the trees the snoiled like feathers, and it lay in mounds along the top of the rail fence, and stood up i, white balls on top of the gate-posts.
Pa came in, shaking the soft snow from his shoulders and stamping it from his boots.
"Its a sugar snow," he said.
Laura put her tongue quickly to a little bit of the white snow that lay in a fold of his sleeve. It was nothing but wet oongue, like any snow. She was glad that nobody had seeaste it.
"Why is it a sugar snow, Pa? she asked him, but he said he didnt have time to explain now. He must hurry away, he was going to Grandpas.
Grandpa lived far away in the Big Woods, where the trees were clether and larger Laura stood at the window and watched Pa, big and swift and strong, walking away over the snow. His gun was on his shoulder, his hatchet and powder horn hung at his side, and his tall boots made great tracks in the soft snow. Laura watched him till he was out of sight in the woods.
It was late before he came home that night. Ma had already lighted the lamp when he came in. Under one arm he carried a large package, and iher hand was a big, covered, wooden bucket.
"Here, Caroline," he said, handing the package and the bucket to Ma, and the the gun on its hooks over the door.
"If Id met a bear," he said, "I couldnt have shot him without dropping my load." Then he laughed. "And if Id dropped that bucket and bundle, I wouldnt have had to shoot him. I could have stood and watched him eat whats in them and lick his chops.”
Ma uned the package and there were two hard, brown cakes, each as large as a milk pan. She uncovered the bucket, and it was full of dark brown syrup.
"Here, Laura and Mary," Pa said, and he gave them each a little round package out of his pocket.
They took off the paper ings, and each had a little, hard, brown cake, with beautifully kled edges.
"Bite it," said Pa, and his blue eyes twinkled.
Each bit off otle kle, and it was sweet. It crumbled in their mouths. It was better even than their Christmas dy.
"Maple sugar," said Pa.
Supper was ready, and Laura and Mary laid the little maple sugar cakes beside their plates, while they ate the maple syrup on their bread.
After supper, Pa took them on his knees as he sat before the fire, and told them about his day at Grandpas, and the sugar snow.
"All winter, Pa said, Grandpa has been making wooden buckets and little troughs. He made them of cedar and white ash, for those woods wont give a bad taste to the maple syrup.
"To make the troughs, he split out little sticks as long as my hand and as big as my two fingers. Near one end, Grandpa cut the stick half through, and split one half off. This left him a flat stick, with a square piece at one end. Then square part, and with his knife he whittled wood till it was only a thin shell around the round hole. The flat part of the stick he hollowed out with his kill it was a little trough.
"He made dozens of them, and he made ten new wooden buckets. He had them all ready when the first warm weather came and the sap began to move irees.
"Then he went into the maple woods and with the bit he bored a hole in each maple tree, and he hammered the round end of the little trough into the hole, a a cedar bucket on the ground uhe flat end.
"The sap, you know, is the blood of a tree. It es up from, the roots, when warm weather begins in the spring, and it goes to the very tip of each brand twig, to make the green leaves grow.
"Well, when the maple sap came to the hole iree, it ran out of the tree, dowtle trough and into the bucket.”
"Oh, didnt it hurt the poor tree?" Laura asked.
"No more than it hurts you when you prick your finger and it bleeds," said Pa.
"Every day Grandpa puts on his boots and his warm coat and his fur cap and he goes out into the snowy woods and gathers the sap. With a barrel on a sled, he drives from tree to tree aies the sap from the buckets into the barrel. Then he hauls it to a big irole, that hangs by a from a cross-timber between two trees.
"He empties the salt into the irole. There is a big bonfire uhe kettle, and the sap boils, and Grandpa watches it carefully. The fire must be hot enough to keep the sap boiling, but99ｌｉｂ? not hot enough to make it boil over.
"Every few mihe sap must be skimmed. Grandpa skims it with a big, long-handled, wooden ladle that he made of basswood. When the sap gets too hot, Grandpa lifts ladlefuls of high in the air and pours it back slowly. This cools the sap a little and keeps it from boiling over. "When the sap has boiled down just enough, he fills the buckets with the syrup. After that, he boils the sap until it grains when he cools it in a saucer.
"The instant the sap is graining, Grandpa jumps to the fire and rakes it all out from beh the kettle. Then as fast as he , he ladles; the thick syrup into the milk pans that are standing ready. In the pans the syrup turns to cakes of hard, brole sugar.”
"So thats why its a sugar snow, because Grandpa is making sugar?" Laura asked.
"No", Pa said. "Its called a sugar snow, because a snow this time of year means that men make more sugar. You see, this little cold spell and the snow will hold back the leafing of the trees, and that makes a longer run of sap.
"When theres a long run of sap, it means that Grandpa make enough maple sugar to last all the year, for on every day. Wheakes his furs to town, he will not o trade for much store sugar. He will get only a little store sugar, to have oable when pany es.”
"Grandpa must be glad theres a sugar snow" Laura said.
"Yes," Pa said, "hes very glad. Hes going to sugar off agai Monday, and he says we must all e,”
Pas blue eyes twinkled; he had been saving the best for the last, and he said to Ma:
"Hey, Caroliherell be a dance!”
Ma smiled. She looked very happy, and she laid down her mending for a minute. Oh, Charles! she said.
Then she went on with her mending, but she kept on smiling. She said, "Ill wear my delaine.”
Mas delaine dress was beautiful. It was a dark green, with a little pattern all over it that looked like ripe strawberries. A dressmaker had made it, in the East, in the place where Ma came from when she married Pa and moved out west to the Big Woods in Wissin. Ma had been very fashionable, before she married Pa, and a dressmaker had made her clothes.
The delaine was kept ed in paper and laid away. Laura and Mary had never seen Ma wear it, but she had shown it to them once. She had let them touch the beautiful dark red buttons that buttohe basque up the front, and she had shown them how ly the whalebones were put in the seams, inside, with hundreds of little criss-cross stitches.
It showed how important a dance was, if Ma was going to wear the beautiful delaine dress. Laura and Mary were excited. They bounced up and down on Pas knees, and asked questions about the dail at last he said:
"Now you girls run along to bed! Youll know all about the dance when you see it. I have to put a ring on my fiddle.”
There were sticky fingers and sweet mouths to be washed. Then there were prayers to be said. By the time Laura and Mary were snug irundle bed, Pa and the fiddle were both singing, while he kept time with his foot on the floor:
“Im Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, I feed my horse on and beans, And I often go beyond my means, For Im Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Im captain in the army!”
Chapter 8:DANCE at GRANDPA’S
MONDAY m everybody got up early, in a hurry to get started to Grandpas. Pa wao be there to help with the work of gathering and boiling the sap. Ma would help Grandma and the aunts make good things to eat for all the people who were ing to the dance.
Breakfast was eaten and the dishes washed and the beds made by lamplight. Pa packed his fiddle carefully in its box and put it in the big sled that was already waiting at the gate.
The air was cold and frosty and the light was gray, when Laura and Mary and Ma with Baby Carrie were tucked in snug and warm uhe robes.
The horses shook their heads and pranced making the sleigh bells ring merrily, and they went on the road through the Big Woods to Grandpas.
The snow was damp and smooth in the road, so the sled slipped quickly over it, and the big trees seemed to be hurrying by oher side.
After awhile there was sunshine in the woods and the air sparkled. The long streaks of yellow, light lay between the shadows of the tree trunks, and the snow was colored faintly pink. All the shadows were thin and blue, and every little curve of snowdrifts and every little tra the snow had a shadow.
Pa showed Laura the tracks of the wild creatures in the snow at the sides of the road. The small, leaping tracks of cottontail rabbits, the tiny tracks of field mice, and the feather-stitg tracks of snowbirds. There were larger tracks, like dogs tracks, where foxes had run, and there were the tracks of a deer that had bounded away into the woods.
The air was growing warmer already and Pa said that the snow wouldnt last long.
It did not seem long until they were sweeping into the clearing at Grandpas house, all the sleigh bells jingling. Grandma came to the door and stood there smiling, calling to them to e in.
She said that Grandpa and Uncle Gee were already at work out in the maple woods. So Pa went to help them, while Laura and Mary and Ma, with Baby Carrie in her arms, went into Grandmas house and took off their s.
Laura loved Grandmas house. It was much larger than their house at home. There was one great big room, and then there was a little room that beloo Uncle Gee, and there was another room for the aunts, Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby. And then there was the kit with a big cookstove.
It was fun to run the whole length of the big room, from the large fireplace藏书网 at one end all the way to Grandmas bed, uhe window iher end. The floor was made of wide, thick slabs that Grandpa had hewed from the logs with his ax. The floor was smoothed all over, and scrubbed and white, and the big bed uhe window was soft with feathers.
The day seemed very short while Laura and Mary played in the big room and Ma helped Grandma and the aunts i. The men had taken their dio the maple woods, so for dihey did not set the table, but ate cold venison sandwiches and drank milk. But for supper Grandma made hasty pudding.
She stood by the stove, sifting the yellow eal from her fingers into a kettle of boiling salted water. She stirred the water all the time with a big wooden spoon, and sifted in the meal until the kettle was full of a thick, yellow, bubbling mass. The it on the back of the stove where it would cook slowly.
It smelled good. The whole house smelled good, with the sweet and spicy smells from the kit, and the smell of the hickory logs burning with clear, bright flames in the fireplace, and the smell of a clove-apple beside Grandmas mending basket oable. The sunshine came in through the sparkling window panes, and everything was large and spacious and .
At supper time Pa and Grandpa came from the woods. Each had on his shoulders a wooden yoke that Grandpa had made. It was cut to fit around their necks in the back, and hollowed out to fit over their shoulders. From ead hung a with a hook, and on each hook hung a big wooden bucket full of hot maple syrup.
Pa and Grandpa had brought the syrup from the big kettle in the woods. They steadied the buckets with their hands, but the weight hung from the yokes on their shoulders. A Grandma made room for a huge brass kettle oove. Pa and Grand Pa poured the syrup into the brass kettle, and it was se that it held all the syrup from the f buckets. Then Uncle Gee came with a smaller bucket of syrup, and everybody ate the hot hasty pudding with maple syrup for supper.
Uncle Gee was home from the army. He wore his blue army coat with the brass buttons, and he had bold, merry blue eyes. He was big and broad and he walked with a swagger.
Laura looked at him all the time she was eating her hasty pudding, because she had heard Pa say to Ma that he was wild.
Gee is wild, since he came back from the war," Pa had said, shaking his head as if he were sorry, but it couldnt be helped. Uncle Gee had run away to be a drummer boy in the army, when he was fourteen years old.
Laura had never seen a wild man before. She did not know whether she was afraid of Uncle Gee or not.
When supper was over, Uncle Gee went outside the door and blew his army bugle, long and loud. It made a lovely, ringing sound, far away through the Big Woods. The woods were dark and silent and the trees stood still as though they were listening. Then from very far away the sound came back, thin and clear and small, like a little bugle answering the big one.
"Listen," Uncle Gee said, "isnt that pretty? " Laura looked at him but she did not say anything, and when Uncle Gee stopped blowing the bugle she ran into the house.
Ma and Grandma cleared away the dishes and washed them, and swept the hearth, while Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby made themselves pretty it, their room.
Laura sat on their bed and watched them b I out their long hair and part it carefully. They parted it from their foreheads to the napes of A their necks and then they parted it
across from ear to ear. They braided their back hair in long braids and then they did the braids up carefully in big knots.
They had washed their hands and faces and scrubbed them well with soap, at the wash-basin on the ben the kit. They had used store soap, not the slimy, soft, dark brown soap that Grandma made a in a big jar to use for on every day.
They fussed for a long time with their front hair, holding up the lamp and looking at their hair itle looking-glass that hung on the log wall. They brushed it so smooth on each side of the straight white part that it shone like silk in the lamplight. The little puff on each side shooo, and the ends were coiled and twisted ly uhe big knot in the back.
Then they pulled on their beautiful white stogs, that they had knit of fiton thread in lacy, openwork patterns, and they buttoned up their best shoes. They helped each other with their corsets. Aunt Docia pulled as hard as she could on Aunt Rubys corset strings, and then Aunt Docia hung on to the foot of the bed ,while Aunt Ruby pulled on hers.
"Pull, Ruby, pull!" Aunt Docia said, breathless. "Pull harder." So Aunt Ruby braced her feet and pulled harder. Aunt Docia kept measuring her waist with her hands, and at last she gasped, "I guess thats the best you do.”
She said, Caroline says Charles could span her waist with his hands, when they were married.”
Caroline was Lauras Ma, and when she heard this Laura felt proud.
Then Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia put on their flannel petticoats and their plaiicoats and their stiff, starched white petticoats with knitted lace all around the flounces. And they put on their beautiful dresses.
Aunt Docias dress rigged print, dark blue, with sprigs of red flowers and green leaves thick upon it. The basque was buttoned down the front with black buttons which looked so exactly like juicy big blackberries that Laura wao taste them.
Aunt Rubys dress was wine-colored calico, covered all over with a feathery pattern in lighter wine color. It buttoned with gold-colored but tons, and every button had a little castle and a tree carved on it.
Aunt Docias pretty white collar was fastened in front with a large round cameo pin, which had a ladys head on it. But Aunt Ruby pinned her collar with a red rose made of sealing wax. She had made it herself, on the head of a darning needle which had a broken eye, so it couldnt be used as a needle any more.
They looked lovely, sailing over the floor so smoothly with their large, round skirts. Their little waists rose up tight and slender in the middle, and their cheeks were red and their eyes bright, uhe wings of shining, sleek hair.
Ma was beautiful, too, in her dark green delaine, with the little leaves that looked like strawberries scattered over it. The skirt was ruffled and flounced and draped and trimmed with knots of dark green ribbon, aling at her throat was a gold pin. The pin was flat, as long and as wide as Lauras two biggest fingers, and it was carved all over, and scalloped on the edges. Ma looked so rid fihat Laura was afraid to touch her.
People had begun to e. They were ing on foot through the snowy woods, with their lanterns, and they were driving up to the door in sleds and in wagons. Sleigh bells were jingling all the time.
The big room filled with tall boots and swishing skirts, and ever so many babies were lying in rows on Grandmas bed. Uncle James and Aunt Libby had e with their little girl, whose name was Laura Ingalls, too. The two Lauras leaned on the bed and looked at the babies, and the other Laura said her baby rettier than Baby Carrie.
"She is not, either! " Laura said. "Carries t.he prettiest baby in the whole world. "No, she isnt," the other Laura said.
"Yes, she is" "No, she isnt" Ma came sailing over in her fine delaine, and said severely: "Laura!
So her Laura said anything more. Uncle Gee was blowing his bugle. It made a loud, ringing sound in the big room, and Uncle Gee laughed and danced, blowing the bugle. The a took his fiddle out of its box and began to play, and all the couples stood in squares on the floor and began to dance when Pa called the figures.
"Grand right a!" Pa called out, and all the skirts began to swirl and all the boots began to stamp. The circles went round and round, all the skirts going one way and all the boots going the other way, and hands clasping and parting high up in the air.
"Swing your partners!" Pa called, and "Each gent bow to the lady on the left!
They all did as Pa said. Laura watched Mas skirt swaying and her little waist bending and her dark head bowing, and she thought Ma was the loveliest dancer in the world. The fiddle was singing:
Oh, you Buffalo gals, Arent you ing out tonight, Arent you ing out tonight, Arent you ing out tonight, Oh, you Buff Buffalo gals, Arent you ing out tonight, To dance by the light of the moon?”
The little circles and the big circles went round and round, and the skirts swirled and the boots stamped, and partners bowed and separated -a and bowed again.
I Grandma was all by herself, stirring the boiling syrup in the big brass kettle. She stirred in time to the music. By the back door ail of snow, and sometimes Grandma took a spoonful of syrup from the kettle and poured it on some of the snow in a saucer.
Laura watched the dancers again. Pa laying "The Irish Washerwoman" now. He called:
"Doe see, ladies, doe see doe, e down heavy on your heel and toe!
Laura could not keep her feet still. Uncle Gee looked at her and laughed.
Then he caught her by the hand and did a little dah her, in the er. She liked Uncle Gee. Everybody was laughing, over by the kit door. They were dragging Grandma in from the kit. Grandmas dress was beautiful, too; a dark blue calico with autumn-colored leaves scattered over it. Her cheeks were pink from laughing, and she was shaking her head. The wooden spoon was in her hand.
"I t leave the syrup," she said.
But Pa began to play "The Arkansas Traveler," and everybody began to clap in time to the music. So Grandma bowed to them all and did a few steps by herself. She could dance as prettily as any of them. The clapping almost drowhe music of Pas fiddle.
Suddenly Uncle Gee did a pigeon wing, and bowing low befrandma he began to jig. Grandma tossed her spoon to somebody. She put her hands on her hips and faced Uncle Gee, and everybody shouted. Grandma was jigging.
Laura clapped her hands in time to the music, with all the other clapping hands. The fiddle sang as it had never sung befrandmas eyes were snapping and her checks were red, and underh her skirts her heels were clig as fast as the thumping of Uncle Gees boots.
Everybody was excited. Uncle Gee kept on) jiggling and Grandma kept on fag him, jigging too. The fiddle did not stop. Uncle Gee began to breathe loudly, and he wiped sweat off his forehead. Grandmas eyes twinkled.
"You t beat her, Gee! " somebody shouted.
Uncle Gee jigged faster. He jigged twice as fast as he had been jigging. So did Grandma. Everybody cheered again. All the women were laughing and clapping their
hands, and all the meeasing Gee. Gee did not care, but he did not have breath enough to laugh. He was jigging.
Pas blue eyes were snapping and sparking. He was standing up, watg Gee and Grandma, and the bow danced over the fiddle strings. Laura jumped up and down and squealed and clapped her hands.
Grandma kept on jigging. Her hands were on her hips and her and she was smiling. Gee kept on jigging, but his boots did not thump as loudly as they had thumped at first. Grandmas heels kept on clickety-clag gaily.
A drop of sweat dripped off Gees forehead and shone on his cheek.
All at once he threw up both arms and gasped, "Im beat!" He stopped jigging.
Everybody made a terrifioise, shouting and yelling and stamping, -cheering Grandma. Grandma jigged just a little minute more, theopped. She laughed in gasps. Her eyes sparkled just like Pas when he laughed. Gee was laughing, too, and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.
Suddenly Grandma stopped laughing. She turned and ran as fast as she could into the kit. The fiddle had stopped playing. All the womealking at ond all the men teasing Gee, but everybody was still for or a minute, when Grandma looked like that.
Then she came to the door betwee and the big room, and said:
"The syrup is waxing. e and help yourselves.”
Then everybody began to talk and laugh again.
They all hurried to the kit for or plates, and outdoors to fill the plates with snow. The kit door en and the cold air came in.
Outdoors the stars were frosty in the sky and the air nipped Lauras cheeks and nose. Her breath was like smoke.
She and the other Laura, and all the other children, scooped up snow with their plates. Then they went bato the crowded kit.
Grandma stood by the brass kettle and with the big wooden spoon she poured hot syrup on each plate of snow. It cooled into soft dy, and as fast as it cooled they ate it.
They could eat all they wanted, for maple sugar never hurt anybody. There lenty of syrup itle, and plenty of snow outdoors. As soon as they ate one plateful, they filled their plates with snow again, and Grandma poured more syrup on it.
When they had eaten the soft maple dy until they could eat no more of it, then they helped themselves from the long table loaded with pumpkin pies and dried berry pies and cookies and cakes. There was salt-rising bread, too, and cold pickles boiled pork, and pickles. “Oo, how sour the pickles were.” They all ate till they could hold no more, and then they began to dance again. But Grandma watched the syrup itle. Many times she took a little of it out into a saucer, and stirred it round and round. Then she shook her head and poured the syrup bato the kettle.
The other room was loud and merry with the music of the fiddle and the noise of the dang.
At last, as Grandma stirred, the syrup in the" saucer turned into little grains like sand, and Grandma called:
"Quick, girls! Its graining!
Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia and Ma left the dand came running. They set out pans, pans and little pans, and as fast as Grandma filled them with the syrup they set out more. They set the filled ones away, to cool into maple sugar.
Then Grandma said: "N the patty-pans for the children.”
There atty-pan, or at least a broken cup or a saucer, for every little girl and boy. They all watched anxiously while Grandma ladled out the syrup. Perhaps there would not be enough. Then somebody would have to be unselfish and olite.
There was just enough syrup to go round. The last scrapings of the brass kettle exactly filled the very last patty-pan. Nobody was left out.
The fiddling and the dang went on and on. Laura and the other Laura stood around and watched the dancers. Then they sat down on the floor in a er, and watched. The dang was so pretty and the music so gay that Laura knew,, she could never get tired of it.
All the beautiful skirts went swirling by, and the boots went stamping, and the fiddle kept on singing gaily.
Then Laura woke up, and she was lying across the foot of Grandmas bed. It was m. Ma and Grandma and Baby Carrie were in the bed. Pa and Grandpa were sleeping rolled up in blas on the floor by the fireplace. Mary was nowhere in sight. She was sleeping with Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby in their bed.
Soon everybody was getting up. There were pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast, and then Pa brought the horses and sled to the door.
He helped Ma and Carrie in, while Grandpa picked up Mary and Uncle Gee picked up Laura and they tossed them over the edge of the sled into the straw. Pa tucked in the robes around them, and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Gee stood calling, "Good-by! Good-by!" as they rode away into the Big Woods, going home.
The sun was warm, and the trotting horses threw up bits of muddy snow with their hoofs. Behind the sled Laura could see their footprints, and every footprint had gohrough the thin snow into the mud.
"Before night," Pa said, "well see the last of the sugar snow.”
Chapter 9: GOING to TOWN
AFTER the sugar snow had gone, spring came. Birds sang in the leafing hazel bushes along the crooked rail fehe grass grew green again and the woods were full of wild flowers. Buttercups and violets, thimble flowers and tiny starry grassflowers were everywhere.
As soon as the days were warm, Laura and Mary begged to be allowed to run barefoot. At first they might only run out around the woodpile and back, in their bare feet. day they could run farther, and soon their shoes were oiled and put away and they ran barefoot all day long.
Every night they had to wash their feet before they, went to bed. Uhe hems of their skirts their ankles and their feet were as brown as their faces.
They had playhouses uhe two big oak trees in front of the house. Marys playhouse was under Marys tree, and Lauras playhouse was under Lauras tree. The soft grass made a green carpet for or them. The green leaves were the roofs, and through them they could see bits of the blue sky.
Pa made a swing of tough bark and hung it to a large, low branch of Lauras tree. It was her swing because it was iree, but she had to be unselfish a Mary swing in it whenever she wao.
Mary had a cracked saucer to play with, and Laura had a beautiful cup with only one big piece broken out of it. Charlotte aie, and the two little wooden men Pa had made, lived in the playhouse with them. Every day they made fresh leaf hats for Charlotte aie, and they made little leaf cups and saucers to set oable. The table was a nice, smooth rock.
Sukey and Rosie, the cows, were turned loose in the woods now, to eat the wild grass and the juiew leaves. There were two little calves in the barnyard, and seven little pigs with the m in the pigpen.
In the clearing he had made last year, Pa lowing around the stumps and putting in his crops. One night he came in from work and said to Laura:
"What do you think I saw today?”
She couldnt guess.
"Well," Pa said. "When was w in the clearing this m, I looked up, and there at the edge of the woods stood a deer. She was a doe, a mother deer and youll never guess what was with her" "A baby deer!" Laura and Mary guessed together, clasping their hands.
"Yes," Pa said, "her faith her. It retty little thing, the softest fawn color, with big dark eyes. It had the ti feet, not much bigger than my thumb, and it had slender little legs, and the softest muzzle.
"It stood there and looked at me with its large, soft eyes, w what I was. It was not afraid at all.”
"You wouldnt shoot a little baby deer, would you, Pa?" Laura said.
"No, never!" he answered. "Nor its Ma, nor its Pa. No more hunting, now, till all the little wild animals have grown up. Well just have to do without fresh meat till fall.”
Pa said that as soon as he had the crops in, they would all go to town. Laura and Mary could go, too. They were old enough now.
They were very much excited, a day they tried to play going to town. They could not do it very well, because they were not quite sure what a town was like. They khere was a store in town, but they had never seen a store.
Nearly every day after that, Charlotte ale would ask if they could go to town. But Laura and Mary always said: "No, dear, you t go this year. Perhaps year, if yood, then you go.”
Then one night Pa said, "Well go to town tomorrow.
That night, though it was the middle of the week, Ma bathed Laura and Mary all over, and she put up their hair. She divided their long hair into wisps, bed each wisp with a wet b and wound it tightly on a bit . There were knobby little bumps all over
their heads, whichever way they turned on their pillows. In the m their hair would be curly.
They were so excited that they did not go to sleep at once. Ma was not sitting with her mending basket as usual. She was busy getting everything ready for a quick breakfast and laying out the best stogs aicoats and dresses, and Pas good shirt, and her own dark brown calico with the little purple flowers on it.
The days were longer now. In the m Ma blew out the lamp before they finished breakfast. It was a beautiful, clear spring m.
Ma hurried Laura and Mary with their breakfast and she washed the dishes quickly. They put on their stock.ings and shoes while she made the beds. Then she helped them put on their best dresses-Marys a-blue calid Lauras dark red caliary buttoned Laura up the back, and then Ma buttoned Mary.
Ma took the rags off their hair and bed it into long, round curls that hung dowheir shoulders. She bed so fast that the snarls hurt dreadfully. Marys hair was beautifully golden, but Lauras was only a dirt-colored brown.
When their curls were done, Ma tied their sunbos uheir s. She fastened her collar with the gold pin, and she utting on her hat when Pa drove up to the gate.
He had curried the horses till they shone. He had swept the wagon box and laid a bla on >the wago. Ma, with Baby Carrie in her arms, sat up on the wago with Pa, and Laura and Mary sat on a board fastened across the wagon box behind the seat.
They were happy as they drove through the springtime woods. Carrie laughed and bounced, Ma was smiling, and Pa whistled while he drove the horses. The sun was bright and warm on the road. Sweet, ells came out of the leafy woods.
Rabbits stood up in the road ahead, their little front paws dangling down and their noses sniffing, and the sun shohrough their tall, twitg ears. Then they bounded away, with a flash of little white tail. Twice Laura and Mary saw deer looking at them with their large, dark eyes, from the shadows among the trees.
It was seven miles to town. The town was named Pepin, and it was on the shore of Lake Pepin.
After a long time Laura began to see glimpses of blue water betweerees. The hard road turo soft sand. The wagon wheels went deep down in it and the horses pulled and sweated. Often Pa stopped them to rest for a few minutes.
Then all at ohe road came out of the woods and Laura saw the lake. It was as blue as the sky, and it went to the edge of the world. As far as she could see, there was nothing
but flat, blue water. Very far away, the sky and the water met, and there was a darker blue line.
The sky was large overhead. Laura had never known that the sky was so big. There was so much empty space all arouhat she felt small and frightened, and glad that Pa and Ma were there.
Suddenly the sunshine was hot. The sun was almost overhead in the large, empty sky, and the cool woods stood back from the edge of the lake. Even the Big Woods seemed smaller under so much sky.
Pa stopped the horses, and turned around on the wago. He pointed ahead with his whip.
"There you are, Laura and Mary! " he said. "Theres the town of Pepin.”
Laura stood up on the board and Pa held her safe by the arm, so she could see the town. When she saw it, she could hardly breathe. She knew how Yankee Doodle felt, when he could not see the town because there were so many houses.
Right on the edge of the lake, there was one great big building. That was the store, Pa told her. It was not made of logs. It was made of wide, gray boards, running up an spread all around it. Behind the store there a clearing, larger than Pas clearing in woods at home.
Standing among the stumps, there were more houses than Laura could t.
They were not made of logs, ether; they were made of boards, like the store.
Laura had never imagined so many houses, and they were so close together. Of course, they were much smaller thaore. One of them was made of new boards that had not had time to get gray; it was the yellow color of newly-cut wood.
People were living in all these houses. Smoke rose up from their eys. Though it was not Monday, some woman had spread out a washing on the bushes and stumps by her house.
Several girls and boys were playing in the sunshine, in the open space betweeore and the houses. They were jumping from oump to the stump and shouting.
"Well, thats Pepin," Pa said.
Laura just nodded her head. She looked and looked, and could not say a word. After awhile she sat down again, and the horses went on.
They left the wagon on the shore of the lake. Pa unhitched the horses and tied oo each side of the wagon box. Theook Laura and Mary by the hand, and Ma came beside
them carrying Baby Carrie. They walked through the deep sand to the store. The warm sand came ihe tops of Lauras shoes.
There was a wide platform in front of the store, and at one end of it steps went up to it out of the sand. Lauras heart was beating so fast that she could hardly climb the steps. She was trembling all over.
This was the store to which Pa came to trade his furs. When they went in, the storekeeper knew him. The storekeeper came out from behind the ter and spoke to him and to Ma, and then Laura and Mary had to show their manners.
Mary said, "How do you do?" but Laura could not say anything.
The storekeeper said to Pa and Ma, "Thats a pretty little girl youve got there," and he admired Marys golden curls. But he did not say anything about Laura, or about her curls. They were ugly and brown.
The store was full of things to look at. All along one side of it were shelves full of colored prints and calicos. There were beautiful pinks and blues and reds and brourples. On the floor along the sides of the plank ters there were kegs of nails, and kegs of round, gray shot, and there were big wooden pails full of dy. There were sacks of salt, and sacks of store sugar.
In the middle of the store low made of shiny wood, with a glittering bright plowshare, and there were steel ax heads, and hammer heads, and saws, and all kinds of knives-hunting knives and skinning knives and butcher knives and jaives. There were big boots and little boots, big shoes and little shoes.
Laura could have looked for weeks and not seen all the things that were in that store. She had not known there were so many things in the world.
Pa and Ma traded for a long time. The storekeeper took down bolts and bolts of beautiful calicos and spread them out for Ma to finger and look at and price. Laura and Mary looked, but must not touch. Every new color and pattern rettier than the last, and there were so many of them! Laura did not know how Ma could ever choose.
Ma chose two patterns of caliake shirts for Pa, and a piece of brown denim to make him a jumper. The some white cloth to make sheets and underwear.
Pa got enough caliake a neron. Ma said:
"Oh, no, Charles, I dont really .”
But Pa laughed and said she must pick it out, or he would get her the turkey red piece with the big yellow pattern. Ma smiled and flushed pink, and she picked out a pattern of rosebuds and leaves on ..a soft, fawn-cround.
Then Pa got for himself a pair of galluses and some tobacoke in his pipe. And Ma got a pound of tea, and a little paper package of store sugar to have in the house when pany came. It ale brown sugar, not dark brown like the maple sugar Ma used for every day.
When all the trading was dohe storekeeper gave Mary and Laura each a piece of dy. They were so astonished and so pleased that they just stood looking at their dies. Then Mary remembered and said, "Thank you.”
Laura could not speak. Everybody was waiting, and she could not make a sound. Ma had to ask her:
"What do you say, Laura?
Then Laura opened her mouth and gulped and whispered, "Thank you.”
After that they went out of the store. Both pieces of dy were white, and flat and thin a-shaped. There rinting on them, in red letters. Ma read it for them. Marys said:
Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, And so are you.
Lauras said only: Sweets to the sweet.
The pieces of dy were exactly the same size. Lauras printing was larger than Marys.
They all went back through the sand to the wagon on the lake shore. Pa fed the horses, otom of the wagon box, some oats he had brought for their dinner. Ma opehe piic box.
They all sat on the warm sahe wagon and ate bread and butter and cheese, hard-boiled eggs and cookies. The waves of Lake Pepin curled up on the shore at their feet and slid back with the smallest hissing sound.
After dinner, Pa went back to the store to talk awhile with other men. Ma sat holding Carrie quietly until she went to sleep. But Laura and Mary ran along the lake shore, pig up pretty pebbles that had been rolled bad forth by the waves until they were polished smooth.
There were no pebbles like that in the Big Woods.
When she found a pretty one, Laura put her pocket, and there were so many, each prettier than the last, that she filled her pocket full. Then Pa called, and they ran back to the wagon, for or the horses were hitched up and it was time to go home.
Laura was so happy, when she ran through the sand to Pa, with all those beautiful pebbles in her pocket. But when Pa picked her up and tossed her into the wagon, a dreadful thing happened.
The heavy pebbles tore her pocket right out of her dress. The pocket fell, and the pebbles rolled all over the bottom of the wagon box.
Laura cried because she had torn her best dress.
Ma gave Carrie to Pa and came quickly to look at the torn place. Then she said it was all right.
"St, Laura," she said. "I fix it." She showed Laura that the dress was not torn at all, nor the pocket. The pocket was a little bag, sewed into the seam of the dress skirt, and hanging u. Only the seams had ripped. Ma could sew the pocket in again, as good as new.
"Pick up the pretty pebbles, Laura," Ma said. "And aime, dont be so greedy.”
So Laura gathered up the pebbles, put them in the pocket, and carried the pocket in her lap. She did not mind very much when Pa laughed at her for being such a gr.eedy little girl that she took more than she could carry away.
Nothing like that ever happeo Mary. Mary was a good little girl who always kept her dress a and minded her manners. Mary had lovely, golden curls, and her dy heart had a poem on it.
Mary looked very good and sweet, unrumpled and , sitting on the board beside Laura. Laura did not think it was fair.
But it had been a wonderful day, the most wonderful day in her whole life. She thought -about the beautiful lake, and the town she had seen, and the big store full of so many things. She held the pebbles carefully in her lap, and her dy heart ed carefully in her handkerchief until she got home and could put it away to keep always. It was too pretty to eat.
The wagon jolted along on the homeward road through the Big Woods. The su, and the woods grew darker, but before the last of the twilight was gohe moon rose. And they were safe, because Pa had his gun.
The soft moonlight came down through the treetops and made pa.９9liｂ.tches of light and shade on the road ahead. The horses hoofs made a cheerful clippety-clop.
Laura and Mary did not say anything because they were very tired, and Ma sat silently holding Baby Carrie, sleeping in her arms. But Pa sang softly:
"Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, theres no place like home.”
Chapter 10: SUMMERTIME
NOW it was summertime, and people went visiting. Sometimes Uncle Henry, or Uncle Gee, randpa, came riding out of the Big Woods to see Pa. Ma would e to the door and ask how all the folks were, and she would say:
"Charles is in the clearing.”
Then she would ore dihan usual, and diime would be longer. Pa and Ma and the visitor would sit talking a little while before they went back to work.
Sometimes Ma let Laura and Mary go across the road and down the hill, to see Mrs. Peterson. The Petersons had Just moved in. Their house was new, and always very , because Mrs. Peterson had no little girls to muss it up. She was a Swede, and she let Laura and Mary look at the pretty things she had brought from Sweden-laces, and colored embroideries, and a.
Mrs. Peterson talked Swedish to them, and they talked English to her, and they uood each other perfectly. She always gave them each a cookie when they left, and they nibbled the cookies very slowly while they walked home.
Laura nibbled away exactly half of hers, and Mary nibbled exactly half of hers, and the other halves they saved for Baby Carrie. Thehey got home, Carrie had two half-cookies, and that was a whole cookie.
This wasnt right. All they wao do was to divide the cookies fairly with Carrie. Still, if Mary saved half her cookie, while Laura ate the whole of hers, or if Laura saved half, and Mary ate her whole cookies, that wouldher.
They didnt know what to do. So each saved half, and gave it to Baby Carrie. But they always felt that somehow that wasnt quite fair.
Sometimes a neighbor sent word that the family was ing to spend the day. Then Ma did extra ing and cooking, and opehe package of store sugar. And on the day set, a wagon would e driving up to the gate in the m and there would be strange children to play ay with.
When Mr. and Mrs. Huleatt came, they brought Eva and Clareh them. Eva retty girl, with dark eyes and black curls. She played carefully a her dress and smooth. Mary liked that, but Laura liked better to play with Clarence.
Clarence was red-headed and freckled, and always laughing. His clothes were pretty, too. He wore a blue suit buttoned all the the front with bright gilt buttons, and trimmed with braid, and he had copper-toed shoes.
The strips of copper across the toes were so glittering bright that Laura wished she were a boy. Little girls didnt wear copper-toes.
Laura and Clarence ran and shouted and climbed trees, while Mary and Eva walked ogether and talked. and Mrs. Huleatt visited and looked at a Godeys Ladys Book which Mrs. Huleatt had brought, and Pa and Mr. Huleatt looked at the horses and the crops and smoked their pipes.
Once Aunt Lotty came to spend the day. That m Laura had to stand still a long time while unwound her hair from the cloth strings and bed it into long curls. Mary was all ready, sitting primly on a chair, with her golden curls shining and her a-blue dress fresh and crisp.
Laura liked her own red dress. But Ma pulled her hair dreadfully, and it was brown instead of golden, so that no oiced it. Everyoiced and admired Marys.
"There! " Ma said at last. "Your hair is curled beautifully, and Lotty is ing.
Ru her, both of you, and ask her which she likes best, brown curls olden curls.”
Laura and Mary ran out of the door and dowh, for Aunt Lotty was already at the gate. Aunt Lotty was a big girl, much taller than Mary. Her dress was a beautiful pink and she was swinging a pink sunbo by oring.
"Which do you like best, Aunt Lotty," Mary asked, "brown curls, olden curls? " Ma had told them to ask that, and Mary was a very good little girl who always did exactly as she was told. Laura waited to hear what Aunt Lotty would say, and she felt miserable.
"I like both kinds best," Aunt Lotty said, smiling. She took Laura and Mary by the hand, one oher side, and they danced along to the door where Ma stood.
The sunshine came streaming through the windows into the house, and everything was so and pretty. The table was covered with a red cloth, and the cookstove olished shining black. Through the bedroom door Laura could see the trundle bed in its plader the big bed. The pantry door stood wide open, giving the sight and smell of goodies on the shelves, and Black Susan came purring dowairs from the attic, where she had been taking a nap.
It was all so pleasant, and Laura felt so gay and good that no one would ever have thought she could be as naughty as she was that evening.
Aunt Lotty had gone, and Laura and Mary were tired and cross. They were at the woodpile, gathering a pan of chips to kihe fire in the m. They always hated to pick up chips, but every day they had to do it. Tonight they hated it more than ever.
Laura grabbed the biggest chip, and Mary said:
"I dont care. Aunt Lotty likes my hair best, anyway. Golden hair is lots prettier than brown.”
Lauras throat swelled tight, and she could not speak. She knew golden hair rettier than brown. She couldnt speak, so she reached out quickly and slapped Marys face.
Then she heard Pa say, "e here, Laura.”
She went slowly, dragging her feet. Pa was sitting just ihe door. He had seen her slap Mary.
"You remember," Pa said, "I told you girls you must rike each other.”
Laura began, "But Mary said-”
"That makes no difference," said Pa. "It is what I say that you must mind.”
Theook down a strap from the wall, and he whipped Laura with the strap.
Laura sat on a chair in the er and sobbed. Wheopped sobbing, she sulked. The only thing in the whole world to be glad about was that Mary had to fill the chip pan all by herself.
At last, when it was getting dark, Pa said again, "e here, Laura." His voice was kind, and when Laura came he took her on his knee and hugged her close. She sat in the crook of his arm, her head against his shoulder and his long brown whiskers partly c her eyes, and everything was all right again.
She told Pa all about it, and she asked him, "You dont like golden hair better than brown, do you?”
Pas blue eyes shone down at her, and he said, "Well, Laura, my hair is brown.”
She had not thought of that. Pas hair was brown, and his whiskers were brown, and she thought brown was a lovely color. But she was glad that Mary had had to gather all the chips.
In the summer evenings Pa did not tell stories Dr play the fiddle. Summer days were long, and he was tired after he had worked hard all day in the fields.
Ma was busy, too. Laura and Mary helped her weed the garden, and they helped her feed the calves and the hens. They gathered the eggs, and they helped make cheese.
When the grass was tall and thi the Woods and the cows were giving plenty of milk, that was the time to make cheese.
Somebody must kill a calf, for cheese could not be made without re, a is the lining of a young calfs stomach. The calf must be very young, so that it had never eaten anything but milk.
Laura was afraid that Pa must kill one of the little calves in the barn. They were so sweet. One was fawn-colored and one was red, and their hair was so soft and their large eyes so w. . Lauras heart beat fast when Ma talked to Pa about making cheese.
Pa would not kill either of his calves, because they were heifers and would grow into cows. He went to Grandpas and to Uncle Henrys, to talk about the cheese-making, and Uncle Henry said he would kill one of his calves. There would be enough re for Aunt Polly and Grandma. So Pa went again to Uncle Henrys, and came back with a piece of the little calfs stomach. It was like a piece of soft, grayish-white leather, all ridged and rough on one side.
When the cows were milked at night, set the milk away in pans. In the m she skimmed off the cream to make into butter later. Thehe ms milk had cooled, she mixed it with the skimmed milk a all oove to heat.
A bit of the reied in a cloth, was soaking in warm water.
When the milk was heated enough, Ma squeezed every drop of water from the re in the cloth, and she poured the water into the milk. She stirred it well a it in a lace by the stove. In a little while it thied into a smooth, quivery mass.
With a long k this mass into little squares, a stand while the curd separated from the whey. Then she poured it all into a cloth ahe thin, yellowish whey drain out.
When no more whey dripped from the cloth, emptied the curd into a big pan and salted it, turning and mixing it well.
Laura and Mary were always there, helping all they could. They loved to eat bits of the curd when Ma was salting it. It squeaked ieeth.
Uhe cherry tree outside the back door Pa had put up the board to press the cheese on. He had cut two grooves the length of the board, and laid the board on blocks, one end a little higher thaher. Uhe lower end stood ay pail.
Ma put her wooden cheese hoop on the board, spread a , wet cloth all over the inside of it, and filled it heaping full of the ks of salted curd. She covered this with another , wet cloth, and laid on top of it a round board, cut small enough to go ihe cheese hoop. Then she lifted a heavy ro top of the board.
All day long the round board settled slowly uhe weight of the rock, and whey pressed out and ran down the grooves of the board into the pail. m, Ma would take out the round, pale yellow cheese, as large as a milk pan. Then she made more curd, and filled the cheese hoop again.
Every m she took the new cheese out of the press, and trimmed it smooth. She sewed a cloth tightly around it, and rubbed the cloth all over with fresh butter. The the cheese on a shelf in the pantry.
Every day she wiped every cheese carefully with a wet cloth, then rubbed it all over with fresh butter once more, and laid it down on its other side. After a great many days, the cheese was ripe, and there was a hard rind all over it.
Then Ma ed each cheese in paper and laid it away on the high shelf. There was nothing more to do with it but eat it.
Laura and Mary liked cheese-making. They liked to eat the curd that squeaked ieeth and they liked to eat the edges pared off the big, round, yellow cheeses to make them smooth, before she sewed them up in cloth.
Ma laughed at them for eating green cheese.
"The moon is made of green cheese, some people say," she told them.
The new cheese did look like the round moon when came up behind the trees. But it was not green, it was yellow, like the moon.
"Its green," said, "because it isnt ripened yet. When its cured and ripened, it wont be a green cheese.”
"Is the moon really made of green cheese?" Laura asked, and laughed.
"I think people say that, because it looks like a green cheese," she said. "But appearances are deceiving." Then while she wiped all the green cheeses and rubbed them with butter, she told them about the dead, oon that is like a little world on whiothing grows.
The first day made cheese, Laura tasted the whey. She tasted it without saying anything to , and when turned around and saw her face, laughed. That night while she was washing the supper dishes and Mary and Laura were wiping them, told Pa that Laura had tasted the whey and didnt like it.
"You wouldnt starve to death on Mas whey, like old Grimes did on his wifes," Pa said.
Laura begged him to tell her about Old Grimes. So, though Pa was tired, he took his fiddle out of its box and played and sang for Laura:
"Old Grimes is dead, that good old man, We neer shall see him more, He used to wear an old gray coat, All buttoned down before.
"Old Grimeses wife made skim-milk cheese, Old Grimes, he drank the whey, There came a wind from the -west, And blew Old Grimes away.”
"There you have it! " said Pa. "She was a mean, tight-fisted woman. If she hadnt skimmed all the milk, a little cream would have run off in the whey, and Old Grimes might have staggered along.
"But she skimmed off every bit of cream, and poor Old Grimes got so thin the wind blew him alumb starved to death.”
Then Pa looked at Ma and said, "Nobodyd starve to death when you were around, Caroline.”
Well , no," Ma said. "No, Charles, not if you were there to provide for us.
Pa leased. It was all so pleasant, the doors and windows wide open to the summer evening, the dishes making little cheerful sounds together as washed them and Mary and Laura wiped, and Pa putting away the fiddle and smiling and whistling softly to himself.
After awhile he said, "Im going over to Henrys tomorrow m, Carolio borrow his grubbing hoe. Those sprouts are getting waist-high around the stumps in the wheat-field. A man just has to keep everlasting at it, or the woodsll take back the place.”
Early m he started to walk to Uncle Henrys. But before long he came hurrying back, hitched the horses to the wagon, threw in his ax, the two washtubs, the washboiler and all the pails and wooden buckets there were.
"I dont know if Ill need em all, Caroline, " he said, "but Id hate to wantem and not haveem.
"Oh, what is it: What is it?" Laura asked, jumping up and down with excitement.
"Pas found a bee tree," Ma said. "Maybe hell bring us some honey.”
It was noon before Pa came driving home. Laura had been watg for him, and she ran out to the wagon as soon as it stopped by the barnyard. But she could not see into it.
Pa called, "Caroline, if youll e take this pail of honey, Ill go unhitch.”
Ma came out to the wagon, disappointed. She said:
"Well, Charles, even a pail of honey is something." Then she looked into the wagon and threw up her hands. Pa laughed.
All the pails and buckets were heaping full of dripping, golden honeyb. Both tubs were piled full, and so was the wash-boiler.
Pa and Ma went bad forth, carrying the two loaded tubs and the wash-boiler and all the buckets and pails into the house. Ma heaped a plate high with the golden pieces, and covered all the rest ly with cloths.
For dihey all had as much of the delicious honey as they could eat, and Pa told them how he found the bee tree.
"I didnt take my gun," he said, "because I wasnt hunting, and now its summer there wasnt much danger of meeting trouble. Panthers and bears are so fat, this time of year, that theyre lazy and good-natured.
"Well, I took a short cut through the woods, and I nearly ran into a big bear. I came around a clump of underbrush, and there he was, not as far from me as across this room.
"He looked around at me, and I guess he saw I didnt have a gun. Anyway, he didnt pay any", more attention to me.
"He was standing at the foot of a big tree, and bees were buzzing all around him. They couldnt sting through his thick fur, and he kept brushing them away from his head with one paw.
"I stood there watg him, a the other paw into a hole iree and drew it out all dripping with honey. He licked the honey off his paw and reached in for or more. But by that time I had found me a club. I wahat honey myself.
So I made a great racket, banging the club against a tree and yelling. The bear was so fat and so full of hohat he just dropped on all fours and waddled off among the trees. I chased him some distand got him going fast, away from the bee tree, and then I came back for the wagon.”
Laura asked him how he got the honey away from the bees.
"That was easy Pa said. "I left the horses ba the woods, where they wouldung, and then I chopped the tree down and split it open.”
"Didnt the bees sting you?”
"No, said Pa. "Bees ing me.
"The whole tree was hollow, and filled from top to bottom with hohe bees must have been st h?t>ohere for years. Some of it was old and dark, but I guess I got enough good, hoo last us a long time.”
Laura was sorry for or the poor bees. She said:
"They worked so hard, and now they wont have any honey.”
But Pa said there was lots of honey left for the bees, and there was another large, hollow tree near by, into which they could move. He said it was time they had a , new home.
They would take the old honey he had left in the old tree, make it into fresh, new honey, and store it in their new house. They would save every drop of the spilled honey and put it away, and they would have plenty of honey again, long before winter came.
Chapter 11 HARVEST
PA AND Uncle Henry traded work. When the grain got ripe in the fields, Uncle Henry came to work with Pa, and Aunt Polly and all the cousins came to spend the day. The.9９liｂ?n Pa went to help Uncle Henry cut his grain, and Ma took Laura and Mary and Carrie to spend the day with Aunt Polly.
Ma and Aunt Polly worked in the house and all the cousins played together in the yard till diime. Aunt Pollys yard was a fine place to play, because the stumps were so thick. The cousins played jumping from stump to stump I without ever toug the ground.
Even Laura, who was littlest, could do this easily in the places where the smallest trees had grown close together. Cousin Charley was a big boy, going on eleven years old, and he could jump from stump to stump all over the yard. The smaller stumps he could jump two at a time, and he could walk oop rail of the fehout being afraid.
Pa and Uncle Henry were out in the field, cutting the oats with cradles. A cradle was a sharp steel blade fasteo a framework of wooden slats that caught ahe stalks of graihe blade cut them. Pa and Uncle Henry carried the cradles by their long, curved handles, and swung the blades into the standing oats. When they, had cut enough to make a pile, they slid the cut stalks off the slats, into heaps on the ground.
It was hard work, walking around and around the field i sun, and with both hands swinging the heavy cradles into the grain and cutting it, then sliding it into the piles.
After all the grain was cut, they must go over the field again. This time they would stoop over each pile, and taking up a handful of the stalks in each hand they would knot them together to make a lorand. Then gathering up the pile of grain in their arms they
would bind it tightly around with the band they had made, and tie the band, and tu its ends.
After they made seven such buhen the bundles must be shocked. To make a shock, they stood five bundles upright, snugly together with the oat-heads up. Thehese they put two more bundles, spreading out the stalks to make a little roof and shelter the five bundles from dew and rain.
Every stalk of the cut grain must always be safely in the shock before dark, for lying on the dewy ground all night would spoil it.
Pa and Uncle Henry were w very hard, because the air was so heavy and hot and still that they expected rain. The oats were ripe, and if they were not cut and in the shock before rain came, the crop would be lost. Then Uncle Henrys horses would be hungry all winter. At noon Pa and Uncle Henry came to the house in a great hurry, and swallowed their dinner as quickly as they could. Uncle Henry said that Charley must help them that afternoon.
Laura looked at Pa, when Uncle Henry said that. At h.ome, Pa had said to Ma that Uncle Henry and Aunt Polly spoiled Charley. When Pa was eleven years old, he had done a good days work every day in the fields, driving a team. But Charley, did hardly any work at all.
Now Uncle Henry said that Charley must e to the field. He could save them a great deal of time. He could go to the spring for water, and he could fetch them the water-jug when they needed a drink. He could fetch the whetstone when the blades needed sharpening.
All the children looked at Charley. Charley did not want to go to the field. He wao stay in the yard and play. But, of course, he did not say so.
Pa and Uncle Henry did not rest at all. They ate in a hurry a right back to work, and Charley went with them.
Now Mary was oldest, and she wao play a quiet, ladylike play. So iernoon the cousins made a playhouse in the yard. The stumps were chairs and tables and stoves, and leaves were dishes, and sticks were the children.
On the way home that night, Laura and Mary heard Pa tell Ma what happened in the field.
Instead of helping Pa and Uncle Henry, Charley was making all the trouble he could. He got in their way so they couldnt swing the cradles. He hid the whetstone, so they had to hunt for it when the blades needed sharpening. He didnt bring the water-jug till Uncle Henry shouted at him three or four times, and then he was sullen.
After that he followed them around, talking and asking questions. They were w too hard to pay any attention to him, so they told him to go away and not bother them.
But they dropped their cradles and ran to him across the field when they heard him scream. The Woods were all around the field, and there were snakes is.
When they got to Charley, there was nothing wrong, and he laughed at them. He said: "I fooled you that time!”
Pa said if he had been Uncle Henry, he would have tahat boys hide for him, right then and there. But Uncle Henry did not do it.
So they took a drink of water a back to work.
Three times Charley screamed, and they ran to him as fast as they could, and he laughed at them. He thought it was a good joke. And still, Uncle Henry did not tan his hide.
Then a fourth time he screamed, louder than an ever. Pa and Uncle Henry looked at him, and he was jumping up and down, screaming. They saw nothing wrong with him and they had been fooled so many times that they went on with their work.
Charley kept on screaming, louder and shriller. Pa did not say anything, but Uncle Henry said , "Let him scream." So they went on w a him scream.
He kept on jumping up and down, screaming. He did not stop. At last Uncle Henry said:
"Maybe something really is wrong." They laid down their cradles a across the field to him.
And all that time Charley had been jumping up and down on a yellow jackets !
The yellow jackets lived in a in the ground and Charley stepped on it by mistake. Then all the little bees in their bright yellow jackets came swarming out with their red-hot stings, and they hurt Charley so that he could away.
He was Jumping up and down and hundreds of bees were stinging him all over. They were stinging his fad his hands and his ned his hey were crawling up his pants legs and stinging and crawling down the back of his ned stinging. The more he jumped and screamed the harder they stung.
Pa and Uncle Henry took him by the arms and ran him away from the yellow jackets . They undressed him, and his clothes were full of yellow jackets and their stings were swelling up all over him. They killed the bees that were stinging him and they shook the bees out of his clothes and then they dressed him again a him to the house.
Laura and Mary and the cousins were playing quietly in the yard, when they heard a loud, blubbering cry. Charley came bawling into the yard and his face was so swollen that the tears could hardly squeeze out of his eyes.
His hands were puffed up, and his neck uffed out, and his cheeks were big, hard puffs. His fingers stood out stiff and swollen. There were little, hard, white dents all over his puffed out fad neck.
Laura and Mary and the cousins stood and looked at him.
Ma and Aunt Polly came running out of the house and asked him what was the matter. Charley blubbered and bawled. Ma said it was yellow jackets. She ran to the garden and got a big pan of earth, while Aunt Polly took Charley into the house and undressed him.
They made a big panful of mud, and plastered him all over with it. They rolled him up in an old sheet and put him to bed. His eyes were swollen shut and his nose was a funny shape. Ma and Aunt Polly covered his whole face with mud and tied the mud on with cloths. Only the end of his nose and his mouth showed. Aunt Polly steeped some herbs, to give him for his fever. Laura and Mary and the cousins stood around for some time, looking at him.
It was dark that night when Pa and Uncle Henry came from the field. All the oats were in the shock, and now the rain could e and it would not do any harm.
Pa could not stay to supper; he had to get home and do the milking. The cows were already waiting, at home, and when cows are not milked on time they do not give so much milk. He hitched up quickly and they all got into the wagon.
Pa was very tired and his hands ached so that he could not drive very well, but the horses khe way home. Ma sat beside him with Baby Carrie, and Laura and Mary sat on the board behind them. Then they heard Pa tell about what Charley had done.
Laura and Mary were horrified. They were often naughty, themselves, but they had never imagihat anyone could be as naughty as Charley had been. He hadnt worked to help save the oats. He hadnt minded his father quickly when his father spoke to him. He had bothered Pa and Uncle Henry when they were hard at work.
Then Pa told about the yellow jackets , and he said, "It served the little liar right.”
After she was irundle bed that night, Laura lay and listeo the rain drumming on the roof and streaming from the eaves, and she thought about a had said.
She thought about what the yellow jackets had doo Charley. She thought it served Charley right, too. It served him right because he had been so monstrously naughty. And the bees had a right to sting him, when he jumped on their home.
But she didnt uand why Pa had called him a little liar. She didnt uand how Charley could be a liar, when he had not said a word.
Chapter 12 The Wonderful MACHINE
day Pa cut the heads from several bundles of the oats, and brought the , bright, yellow straws to Ma. She put them in a tub of water, to soften them ahem soft. The in the chair by the side of the tub, and braided the straws.
She took up several of them, kheir ends together, and began to braid. The straws were differehs, and when she came he end of oraw, she put a new, long one from the tub in its plad went on braiding. She let the end of the braid fall bato the water a on braiding till she had many yards of braid. All her spare time for or days, she was braiding straws.
She made a fine, narrow, smooth braid, using seven of the smallest straws. She used nine larger straws for a wider braid, and made it notched all along the edges. And from the very, largest straws she made the widest braid of all.
When all the straws were braided, she threaded a needle with strong white thread, and beginning at the end of a braid she sewed it round and round, holding the braid so it would lie flat after it was sewed. This made a little mat, and Ma said it was the top of the of a hat.
Then she held the braid tighter on one edge, a on sewing it around and around. The braid drew in and made the sides of the . When the was high enough, Ma held the braid loosely again as she kept on sewing around, and the braid lay flat and was the hat brim.
When the brim was wide enough, Ma cut the braid and sewed the end fast so that it could not unbraid itself.
Ma sewed hats for Mary and Laura of the fi, narrowest braid. For Pa and for herself she made hats of the wider, notched braid. That as Sunday hat. Then she made him two everyday hats of the coarser, widest braid.
When she finished a hat, Ma set it on a board to dry, shaping it nicely as she did so, and when it dried it stayed in the shape she gave it.
Ma could make beautiful hats. Laura liked to watch her, and she learned how to braid the straw and made a little hat for Charlotte.
The days were growing shorter and the nights were cooler. One night Jack Frost passed by, and in the m there were bright colors here and there among the green leaves of the Big Woods. Then all the leaves stopped being green. They were yellow and scarlet and crimson and golden and brown.
Along the rail fehe sumac held up its dark red es of berries above bright flame-colored leaves. As were falling from the oaks, and Laura and Mary made little a cups and saucers for the playhouses. Walnuts and hickory nuts were dropping to the ground in the Big Woods, and squirrels were scampering busily everywhere, gathering their winters store of nuts and hiding them away in hollow trees.
Laura and Mary went with Ma to gather walnuts and hickory nuts and hazelnuts. They spread them in the sun to dry, then they beat off the dried outer hulls and stored the nuts iic for winter.
It was fun to gather the large round walnuts and the smaller hickory nuts, and the little hazelnuts that grew in bunches on the bushes. The soft outer hulls of the walnuts were full of a brown juice that staiheir hands, but the hazelnut hulls smelled good and tasted good, too, when Laura used her teeth to pry a nut loose.
Everyone was busy now, for all the gardeables must be stored away. Laura and Mary helped, pig up the dusty potatoes after Pa had dug them from the ground, and pulling the long yellow carrots and the round, purple-topped turnips, and they helped Ma cook the pumpkin for pumpkin pies.
With the butcher knife Ma cut the big, e colored pumpkins into halves. She ed the seeds out of the ter and cut the pumpkin into long slices, from which she pared the rind. Laura helped her cut the slices into cubes.
Ma put the cubes into the big iron pot oove, poured in some water, and then watched while the pumpkin slowly boiled down, all day long. All the water and the juice must be boiled away, and the pumpkin must never burn.
The pumpkin was a thick, dark, good-smelling mass itle. It did not boil like water, but bubbles came up in it and suddenly exploded, leaving holes that closed quickly. Every time a. bubble exploded, the rich, hot, pumpkin smell came out.
Laura stood on a chair and watched the pumpkin for Ma, and stirred it with a wooden paddle. She held the paddle in both hands and stirred carefully, because if the pumpkin burhere wouldnt be any pumpkin pies.
For dihey ate the stewed pumpkin with their bread. They made it into pretty shapes on their plates. It was a beautiful color, and smoothed and molded so prettily with their knives. Ma never allowed them to play with their food at table; they must always eat nicely everything that was set before them, leaving nothing on their plates. But she did let them make the rich, brown, stewed pumpkin into pretty shapes before they ate it.
At other times they had baked Hubbard squash for dihe rind was so hard that Ma had to take Pas ax to cut the squash into pieces. When the pieces were baked in the oven, Laura loved to spread the soft insides with butter and then scoop the yellow flesh from the rind a it.
For supper, now, they often had hulled and milk. That was good, too. It was so good that Laura could hardly wait for the to be ready, after Ma started to hull it. It took two or three days to make hulled .
The first day, Ma ed and brushed all the ashes out of the cookstove. Then she burned some , bright hardwood, and saved its ashes. She put the hardwood ashes in a little cloth bag.
That night Pa brought in some ears of with large plump kernels. He he ears, shelling off the small, chaffy kernels at their tips.
Then he shelled the rest into a large pan, until the pan was full.
Early day Ma put the shelled and the bag of ashes into the big irole. She filled the kettle with water, a it boiling a long time.
At last the kernels of began to swell, and they swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off.
When every skin was loose and peeling, Ma lugged the heavy kettle outdoors. She filled a washtub with cold water from the spring, and she dipped the out of the kettle into the tub.
Then she rolled the sleeves of her flowered calico dress above her elbows, and she k by the tub. With her hands she rubbed and scrubbed the until the hulls came off and floated on top of the water.
Often she poured the water off, and filled the tub again with buckets of water from the spring. She kept on rubbing and scrubbing the between her hands, and ging the water, until every hull came off and was washed away.
Ma looked pretty, with her bare arms plump and white, her cheeks so red and her dark hair smooth and shining, while she scrubbed and rubbed the in the clear water. She never splashed one drop of water on her pretty dress.
When at last the was done, Ma put all the soft, white kernels in a big jar in the pantry. Then at last, they had hulled and milk for supper.
Sometimes they had hulled for breakfast, with maple syrup, and sometimes Ma fried the soft kernels in pork drippings. But Laura liked them best with milk.
Autumn was great fun. There was bbr>?９９ｌiｂ?so much work to do, so many good things to cat, so mahings to see. Laura was scampering and chattering like the squirrels, from m to night.
One frosty m, a mae came up the road. Four horses were pulling it, and two men were on it. The horses hauled it up into the field where Pa and Uncle Henry and Grandpa and Mr. Peterson had stacked their wheat.
Two more men drove after it another, smaller mae.
Pa called to Ma that the threshers had e; then he hurried out. to the field with his team. Laura and Mary asked Ma, and then they ran out to the field after him. They might watch, if they were careful not to get in the way.
Uncle Henry came riding up and tied his horse to a tree. Then he and Pa hitched all the other horses, eight of them, to the smaller mae.
They hitched each team to the end of a long stick that came out from the ter of the mae. A long iron rod lay along the ground, from this mae to the big mae.
Afterward Laura and Mary asked questions, and Pa told them that the big mae was called the separator, and the rod was called the tumbling rod, and the little mae was called the horsepower. Eight horses were hitche?９9liｂ?d to it and made it go, so this was a-horsepower mae.
A man sat on top of the horsepower, and whehing was ready he clucked to the horses, and they began to go. They walked around him in a circle, each team pulling on the long stick to which it was hitched, and following the team ahead. As they went around, they stepped carefully over the tumbling rod, which was tumbling over and over on the ground.
Their pulling made the tumbling rod keep rolling over, and the rod moved the maery of the separator, which stood beside the stack of wheat.
All this maery made an enormous racket, rackety-banging and ging. Laura and Mary held tight to each others hand, at the edge of the field, and watched with all their eyes. They had never seen a mae before. They had never heard such a racket.
Pa and Uncle Henry, on top of the wheat stack, were pitg bundles down on to a board. A man stood at the board and cut the bands on the bundles and crowded the bundles o a time into a hole at the end of the separator.
The hole looked like the separators mouth, and it had long, iroh. The teeth were chewing. They chewed the bundles and the separator swallowed them. Straw blew out at the separators other end, and oured out of its side.
Two men were w fast, trampling the straw and building it into a staan was w fast sag the p grain. The grains of oured out of the separator into a half-bushel measure, and as fast as the measure filled, the man slipped at>..t>ty oo its plad emptied the full oo a sack. He had Just time to empty it and slip it bader the spout before the other measure ran over.
All the men were w as fast as they possibly could, but the mae kept right up with them. Laura and Mary were so excited they hardly breathe. They held hands tightly and stared.
The horses walked around and around. The man who was driving them cracked his whip and shouted, Giddap there, John! No use trying to shirk!" Crack! went the whip. "Careful there, Billy! Easy, boy! You t go but so fast no how.”
The separator swallowed the buhe golden straw blew out in a golden cloud, the wheat streamed golden-brown out of the spout, while the men hurried. Pa and Uncle Henry pitched bundles down as fast as they could. And chaff and dust blew over everything.
Laura and Mary watched as long as they could.
Then they ran back to the house to help Ma get dinner for all those men.
A big kettle of cabbage a was boiling oove; a big pan of beans and a Johnnycake were baking in the oven. Laura and Mary set the table for the threshers. They put on salt rising bread and butter, bowls of stewed pumpkin, pumpkin pies and dried berry pies and cookies, cheese and honey and pitchers of milk.
Then Ma put on the boiled potatoes and cabbage a, the baked beans, the hot johnnycake and the baked Hubbard squash, and she poured the tea.
Laura always wondered why bread made of eal was called johnny-cake. It wasnt cake. Ma didnt know, uhe Northern soldiers called it johnny-cake because the people in the South, where they fought, ate so much of it.
They called the Southern soldiers Johnny, Rebs. Maybe, they called the Southern bread, cake, just for fun. Ma had heard some say it should be called journey-cake. She didnt know. It wouldnt be very good bread to take on a journey.
At noohreshers came in to the table loaded with food. But there was oo much, for threshers work hard a very hungry.
By the middle of the afternoon the maes had finished all the threshing, and the men who owhem drove them away into the Big Woods, taking with them the sacks of wheat that were their pay. They were going to the place where neighbors had stacked their wheat and wahe maes to thresh it.
Pa was very tired that night, but he was happy. He said to Ma:
"It would have taken Henry aerson and Pa and me a couple of weeks apiece to thresh as much grain with flails as that mae threshed today. We wouldnt have got as much wheat, either, and it wouldnt have been as .
"That maes a great iion!" he said.
"Other folks stick to .old-fashioned ways if they want to, but Im all fress. Its a great age were living in. As long as I raise wheat, Im going to have a mae e and thresh it, if theres one anywhere in the neighborhood.”
He was too tired that night to talk to Laura, but Laura roud of him. It a who had got the other men to stack their wheat together and send for the threshing mae, and it was a wonderful mae. Everybody was glad it had e.
Chapter 13 The DEER In The Wood
The HE grass was dry and withered, and the ust be taken out of the woods a in the barn to be fed. All the bright-colored leaves became dull browhe cold fall rains began.
There was no more playing uhe trees. But Pa was in the house when it rained, and he began again to play the fiddle after supper.
Then the rains stopped. The wea.her grew colder. In the early ms everything sparkled with frost. The days were growing short and a little fire burned all day in the cookstove to keep the house warm. Winter was not far away.
The attid the cellar were full of good things once more, and Laura and Mary had started to make patchwork quilts. Everything was beginning to be snug and cosy again.
One night when he came in from doing the chores Pa said that after supper he would go to his deer-lid watch for a deer. There had been no fresh meat itle house since spring, but now the fawns were grown up, and Pa would go hunting again.
Pa had made a deer-lick, in an op藏书网en pla the woods, with trees near by in which he could sit to watch it. A deer-lick lace where the deer came to get salt. When they found a salty pla the ground they came there to lick it, and that was called a deer-lick. Pa had made one by sprinkling salt over the ground.
After supper Pa took his gun a into the woods, and Laura and Mary went to sleep without any stories or music.
As soon as they woke in the m they ran to the window, but there was no deer hanging irees. Pa had never befo to get a deer and e home without one. Laura and Mary did not know what to think.
All day Pa was busy, banking the little house and the barn with dead leaves and straw, held down by stoo keep out the cold. The weath?er grew colder all day, and that night there was once more a fire on the hearth and the windows were shut tight and ked for the winter.
After supper Pa took Laura on his knee, while Mary sat close in her little chair. And Pa said:
"Now Ill tell you why you had no fresh meat to eat today.
"When I went out to the deer-lick, I climbed up into a big oak tree. I found a pla a branch where I was fortable and could watch the deer-lick. I was near enough to shoot any animal that came to it, and my gun was loaded and ready on my knee.
"There I sat and waited for the moon to rise and light the clearing. I was a little tired from chopping wood all day yesterday, and I must have fallen asleep, for I found myself opening my eyes.” "The big, round moon was just rising. I could see it between the bare branches of the trees, low in the sky. And right against it I saw a deer standing. His head and he was listening. His great, brang horns stood out above his head.
He was dark against the moon.
"It erfect shot. But he was so beautiful, he looked s and free and wild, that I couldnt kill him. I sat there and looked at him, until he bounded away into the dark woods.
"Then I remembered that, Ma and my little girls were waiting for me t home some good fresh venison. I made up my mind that ime I would shoot.
"After awhile a big bear came lumbering out into the open. He was so fat at from feasting on berries and roots and grubs all summer that he was nearly as large as two bears. His head swayed from side to side as he went on all fours across the clear spa the moonlight, until he came to a rotten log. He smelled it, and listehen he pawed it apart and sniffed among the broken pieces, eating up the fat white grubs.
"Theood up on his hind legs, perfectly still, looking all around him. He seemed to be suspicious that something was wrong. He was trying to see or smell what it was.
"He erfect mark to shoot at, but I was so muterested in watg him, and the woods were so peaceful in the moonlight, that I fot all about my gun. I did not even think of shooting him, until he was waddling away into the woods.
" This will never do, I thought. Ill never get ahis way. "I settled myself iree and waited again. This time I was as determio shoot the game I saw.
"The moon had risen higher and the moonlight was bright itle open place. All around it the shadows were dark among the trees.
"After a long while, a doe and her yearling fawn came stepping daintily out of the shadows. They were not afraid at all. They walked over to the place where I had sprihe salt, and they both licked up a little of it.
"Then they raised their heads and looked at each other. The fawn stepped over and stood beside the doe. They stood there together, looking at the woods and the moonlight. Their large eyes were shining and soft.
I just sat there looking at them, until they walked away among the shadows. Then I climbed down out of the tree and came home.”
Laura whispered in his ear, "Im glad you didnt shoot them! “
Mary said, "We eat bread and butter.”
Pa lifted Mary up out of her chair and hugged them both together.
"Youre my good girls," he said. "And now its>藏书网 bedtime. Run along, while I get my fiddle.”
When Laura and Mary had said their prayers aucked snugly uhe trundle beds covers, Pa was sitting in the firelight with the fiddle. Ma had blown out the lamp because she did not s light. Oher side of the hearth she was swayily in her rog chair and her knitting needles flashed in and out above the sock she was knitting.
The long winter evenings of firelight and music had e again. Pas fiddle walled while Pa was singing:
Oh, Susi-an-na, dont you cry for me, Im going to Cal-i-for-ni-a, The gold dust for to see.”
Then Pa began to play again the song about Old Grimes. But he did not sing the words he had sung when Ma was making cheese. These words were different. Pas strong, sweet voice was softly singing:
"Shall auld acquaintance be fot, And never brought to mind? Shall auld acquaintance be fot, And the days of auld lang syne? And the days of auld lang syne, my friend, And the days of auld lang syne, Shall auld acquaintance be fot, And the days of auld lang syne?”
When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now.
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pas fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rog and knitting.
She thought to herself, "This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be fotten, she thought, because now is now. It ever be a long time ago.天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》