Little Town On The Prairie (19 page)

Mary's teacher had written, praising Mary highly.

The letter said, too, that Mary could send home an example of her bead work if she could buy the beads, and that she needed a special slate to write on, and that perhaps later they would wish her to own another kind of special slate on which to write Braille, a kind of writing that the blind could read with their fingers.

“Mary will know that we are all thinking of her at Christmas time,” said Ma, and they were all happier in knowing that the Christmas box was on its way.

Still, without Mary it was not like Christmas. Only Grace was wholly joyous when at breakfast they opened the Christmas presents. For Grace there was a real doll, with a china head and hands, and little black slippers sewed on her cloth feet. Pa had put rockers on a cigar box to make a cradle for the doll, and Laura and Carrie and Ma had made little sheets and a pillow and a wee patchwork quilt, and had dressed the doll in a nightgown and a nightcap. Grace was perfectly happy.

Together Laura and Carrie had bought a German-silver thimble for Ma, and a blue silk necktie for Pa.

And at Laura's plate was the blue-and-gilt book, Tennyson's Poems, Pa and Ma did not guess that she was not surprised. The y had brought from Iowa a book for Carrie, too, and kept it hidden. It was Stories of the Moorland.

That was all there was to Christmas. After the morning's work was done, Laura at last sat down to read “ The Lotos-Eaters.” Even that poem was a disappointment, for in the land that seemed always afternoon the sailors turned out to be no good. They seemed to think they were entitled to live in that magic land and lie around complaining. When they thought about bestirring themselves, they only whined, “Why should we ever labor up the laboring wave?” Why, indeed! Laura thought indignantly.

Wasn't that a sailor's job, to ever labor up the laboring wave? But no, they wanted dreamful ease. Laura slammed the book shut.

She knew there must be beautiful poems in such a book, but she missed Mary so much that she had no heart to read them.

Then Pa came hurrying from the post office with a letter. The handwriting was strange, but the letter was signed, Mary! She wrote that she placed the paper on a grooved, metal slate, and by feeling the grooves she could form the letters with a lead pencil. This letter was her Christmas present to them all.

She wrote that she liked college and that the teachers said she was doing well in her studies. She was learning to read and to write Braille. She wished that she might be with them on Christmas, and they must think of her on Christmas day as she would be thinking of them all.

Quietly the day went by after the letter was read.

Once Laura said, “If only Mary were here, how she would enjoy the Literaries!”

Then suddenly she thought how swiftly everything was changing. It would be six more years before Mary came home, and nothing could ever be again the same as it had been.

Laura did no studying at all between those school terms, and January went by so quickly that she had hardly time to catch her breath. That winter was so mild that school was not closed for even one day.

Every Friday night there was a Literary, each more exciting than the last.

There was Mrs. Jarley's Wax Works. From miles around, everyone came that night. Horses and wagons and saddle ponies were tied to all the hitching posts.

The brown Morgans stood covered with neatly buck-led blankets, and Almanzo Wilder stood with Cap Garland in the crowded schoolhouse.

A curtain of white sheets hid the teacher's platform.

When this curtain was drawn aside, a great gasp went up, for all along the wall and across each end of the platform was a row of wax figures, life-size.

At least, they looked as if they were made of wax.

Their faces were white as wax, except for painted-on black eyebrows and red lips. Draped in folds of white cloth, each figure stood as motionless as a graven image.

After some moments of gazing on those waxen figures, Mrs. Jarley stepped from behind the drawn-back curtain. No one knew who she was. She wore a sweeping black gown and a scoop bonnet, and in her hand she held the teacher's long pointer.

In a deep voice she said, “George Washington, I command thee! Live and move!” and with the pointer she touched one of the figures.

The figure moved! In short, stiff jerks, one arm lifted and raised from the folds of white cloth a wax-like hand gripping a hatchet. The arm made chopping motions with the hatchet.

Mrs. Jarley called each figure by its name, touched it with the pointer, and each one moved jerkily.

Daniel Boone raised and lowered a gun. Queen Elizabeth put on and took off a tall gilt crown. Sir Walter Raleigh's stiff hand moved a pipe to and from his motionless lips.

One by one all those figures were set in motion.

They kept on moving, in such a lifeless, waxen way that one could hardly believe they were really alive.

When finally the curtain was drawn to, there was one long, deep breath, and then wild applause. All the wax figures, naturally alive now, had to come out before the curtain while louder and louder grew the applause. Mrs. Jarley took off her bonnet and was Gerald Fuller. Queen Elizabeth's crown and wig fell off, and she was Mr. Bradley. There seemed no end to the hilarious uproar.

“This is the climax, surely,” Ma said on the way home.

“You can't tell,” Pa said teasingly, as if he knew more than he would say. “This whole town has its ginger up now.”

Mary Power came next day to visit with Laura, and all the afternoon they talked about the waxworks.

That evening when Laura settled down to study she could only yawn.

“I might as well go to bed,” she said, “I'm too slee—” and she yawned enormously.

“This will make two evenings you've lost this week,” said Ma. "And tomorrow night there's church.

We are living in such a whirl of gaiety lately that I declare— Was that a knock at the door?"

The knock was repeated, and Ma went to the door.

Charley was there, but he would not come in. Ma took an envelope that he handed her, and shut the door.

“This is for you, Laura,” she said.

Carrie and Grace looked on wide-eyed, and Pa and Ma waited while Laura read the address on the envelope. “Miss Laura Ingalls, De Smet, Dakota Territory.”

“Why, what in the world,” she said. She slit the envelope carefully with a hairpin and drew out a folded sheet of gilt-edged notepaper. She unfolded it and read aloud.

Ben M. Woodworth

requests the pleasure of

your company at his home

Saturday Evening

January 28th

Supper at Eight o'clock

Just as Ma sometimes did, Laura sat limply down.

Ma took the invitation from her hand and read it again.

“It's a party,” Ma said. “A supper party.”

“Oh, Laura! You're asked to a party!” Carrie exclaimed. The n she asked, “What is a party like?”

“I don't know,” Laura said. “Oh, Ma, what will I do? I never went to a party. How must I behave at a party?”

“You have been taught how to behave wherever you are, Laura,” Ma replied. “You need only behave properly, as you know how to do.”

No doubt this was true, but it was no comfort to Laura.

All the next week Laura thought of the party.

She wanted to go and she did not want to.

Once, long ago when she was a little girl, she had gone to Nellie Oleson's party, but that was a little girl's party. This would be different.

At school Ida and Mary Power were excited about it.

Arthur had told Minnie that it would be a birthday party, for Ben's birthday. From politeness they could hardly say a word about it, because Nellie was with them at recess, and Nellie had not been invited. She could not have come, because she lived in the country.

On the night of the party, Laura was dressed and ready at seven o'clock. Mary Power was coming to go with her to the depot, but she would not come for half an hour yet.

Laura tried to read again her favorite of Tennyson's poems,

Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad And the musk of the rose is blown.

She could not sit still. She took one more look into the looking glass that hung on the wall. She wished so much to be tall and slim that she almost hoped to see a slender, tall girl. But in the glass she saw a small, round girl in a Sunday-best dress of blue cashmere.

At least it was a young lady's dress, so long that it hid the high tops of her buttoned shoes. The full-gathered skirt was gathered as full in the back as it could possibly be. Over it fitted the tight basque that came down in points in front and in back, and buttoned snugly with little green buttons straight up the front. A band of blue-and-gold-and-green plaid went around the skirt just above the hem, and narrow strips of plaid edged the pointed bottom of the basque and went around the wrists of the tight, long sleeves. The upstanding collar was of the plaid, with a frill of white lace inside it, and Ma had lent Laura her pearl-shell pin to fasten the collar together under her chin.

Laura could not find one fault with the dress. But, oh! how she wished she were tall and willowy, like Nellie Oleson. Her waist was as round as a young tree, her arms were slender but round, too, and her very small hands were rather plump and capable-looking.

The y were not thin and languid like Nellie's hands.

Even the face in the glass was all curves. The chin was a soft curve and the red mouth had a short, curving upper lip. The nose was almost right, but the least bit of a saucy tilt kept it from being Grecian. The eyes, Laura thought, were too far apart, and they were a softer blue than Pa's. The y were wide-open and anxious. The y did not sparkle at all.

Straight across the forehead was the line of curled bangs. At least, her hair was thick and very long, though it was not golden. It was drawn back smooth from the bangs to the heavy mat of the coiled braid that covered the whole back of her head. Its weight made her feel really grown-up. She turned her head slowly to see the lamplight run glistening on its brown smoothness. The n suddenly she realized that she was behaving as if she were vain of her hair.

She went to the window. Mary Power was not yet in sight. Laura so dreaded the party that she felt she simply could not go.

“Sit down and wait quietly, Laura,” Ma gently ad-monished her. Just then Laura caught sight of Mary Power, and feverishly she got into her coat and put on her hood.

She and Mary Power said hardly anything as they walked together up Main Street to its end, then followed the railroad track to the depot, where the Woodworths lived. The upstairs windows were brightly lighted, and a lamp burned in the telegraph office downstairs, where Ben's older brother Jim was still working. He was the telegraph operator. The electric telegraph's chattering sounded sharp in the frosty night.

“I guess we go into the waiting room,” Mary Power said. “Do we knock, or just go right in?”

“I don't know,” Laura confessed. Oddly, she felt a little better because Mary Power was uncertain, too.

Still her throat was thick and her wrists were fluttering. The waiting room was a public place, but its door was shut and this was a party.

Mary Power hesitated, then knocked. She did not knock loudly, but the sound made them both start.

No one came. Boldly Laura said, “Let's go right in!”

As she spoke, she took hold of the door handle, and suddenly Ben Woodworth opened the door.

Laura was so upset that she could not answer his,

'Good evening.“ He was wearing his Sunday suit and stiff white collar. His hair was damp and carefully combed. He added, ”Mother's upstairs."

They followed him across the waiting room and up the stairs to where his mother was waiting in a little hall at their head. She was small as Laura, and plumper, and she was daintiness itself, in a soft, thin gray dress with snowy white ruffles at throat and wrists. But she was so friendly that Laura felt comfortable at once.

In her bedroom they took off their wraps. The room was as dainty as Mrs. Woodworth. The y hesitated to lay their coats on the dainty bed, with its knitted white coverlet and ruffled pillow shams. Thin, ruffled white muslin curtains were draped back at the windows, and on a little stand-table a knitted lace doily lay under the lamp. White knitted lace to match was spread on the bureau top, and white lace was draped across the top of the mirror frame.

Mary Power and Laura looked into the mirror, and with their fingers they fluffed up their bangs, slightly flattened by their hoods. The n in the friendliest way Mrs. Woodworth said, “If you've finished your primp-ing, come into the sitting room.”

Ida and Minnie, Arthur and Cap and Ben were already there. Mrs. Woodworth said, smiling, “Now when Jim comes up from work, our party will be complete.” She sat down and began to talk pleasantly.

The sitting room was pleasant with shaded lamplight and cozy with warmth from the heater. Dark red cloth curtains were draped at the windows, and the chairs were not set against the wall but gathered about the stove, where the coals glowed through the isinglass of the stove's door. Besides the plush photograph album on the center-table's marble top, there were several other books standing on its lower shelf. Laura longed to look into them, but it would not be polite to be so inattentive to Mrs. Woodworth.

After a few moments Mrs. Woodworth excused herself and went into the kitchen. The n a stillness settled on everyone. Laura felt that she should say something, but she could think of nothing to say. Her feet seemed too big and she did not know what to do with her hands.

Through a doorway she saw a long table covered with a white cloth. China and silver sparkled on it, in the light of a lamp that hung suspended on long gilt chains from the ceiling. Glittering glass pendants hung down all around the edge of the lamp's milk-white shade.

It was all so pretty, but Laura could not forget her feet. She tried to draw them farther back beneath her skirts. She looked at the other girls, and knew that she must say something, for no one else could. Yet it was more than she could do, to break that silence. Her heart sank as she thought that, after all, a party was as uncomfortable as a sociable.