On The Banks Of Plum Creek (12 page)

Then they went outdoors with Jack. Laura showed them the little chicks by the hay-stacks, and they looked at the green garden rows and the thick-growing wheat-field. They ran down the knoll to the low bank of Plum Creek. There was the willow and footbridge, and the water coming out of the plum thicket's shade, running wide and shallow over sparkling pebbles and gurgling under the bridge to the knee-deep pool.

Mary and the big girls came down slowly, bringing Carrie to play with. But Laura and Christy and Maud and Nellie held their skirts up above their knees and went wading into the cool, flowing water. Away through the shallows the minnows went swimming in crowds away from the shouts and splashing.

The big girls took Carrie wading where the water sparkled thin in the sunshine, and gathered pretty pebbles along the creek's edge.

The little girls played tag across the footbridge. They ran on the warm grass, and played in the water again. And while they were playing, Laura suddenly thought of what she could do to Nellie.

She led the girls wading near the old crab's home. Thenoise and splashing had driven him under his rock. She saw his angry claws and browny-green head peeping out, and she crowded Nellie near him. Then she kicked a big splash of water onto his rock and she screamed:

“Oo, Nellie! Nellie, look out!”

The old crab rushed at Nellie's toes, snapping his claws to nip them.

“Run! Run!” Laura screamed, pushing Christy and Maud back toward the bridge, and then she ran after Nellie. Nellie ran screaming straight into the muddy water under the plum thicket. Laura stopped on the gravel and looked back at the crab's rock.

“Wait, Nellie,” she said. “You stay there.”

“Oh, what was it? What was it? Is he coming?” Nellie asked. She had dropped her dress, and her skirt and petticoats were in the muddy water.

“It's an old crab,” Laura told her. “He cuts big sticks in two with his claws. He could cut our toes right off.”

“Oh, where is he? Is he coming?” Nellie asked.

“You stay there and I'll look,” said Laura, and she went wading slowly and stopping and looking. The old crab was under his rock again, but Laura did not say so. She waded very slowly all the way to the bridge, while Nellie watched from the plum thicket. Then she waded back and said, “You can come out now.”

Nellie came out into the clean water. She said she didn't like that horrid old creek and wasn't going to play any more. She tried to wash her muddy skirt and then she tried to wash her feet, and then she screamed.

Muddy-brown bloodsuckers were sticking to her legs and her feet. She couldn't wash them off. She tried to pick one off, and then she ran screaming up on the creek bank.

There she stood kicking as hard as she could, first one foot and then the other, screaming all the time.

Laura laughed till she fell on the grass and rolled. “Oh, look, look!” she shouted, laughing. “See Nellie dance!”

All the girls came running. Mary told Laura to pick those bloodsuckers off Nellie, but Laura didn't listen. She kept on rolling and laughing.

“Laura!” Mary said. "You get up and pull those things off, or I'll tell Ma."

Then Laura began to pull the bloodsuckers off Nellie. All the girls watched and screamed while she pulled them out long, and longer, and longer. Nellie cried: “I don't like your party!” she said. “I want to go home!”

Ma came hurrying down to the creek to see why they were screaming. She told Nellie not to cry, a few leeches were nothing to cry about. She said it was time now for them all to come to the house.

The table was set prettily with Ma's best white cloth and the blue pitcher full of flowers. The benches were drawn up on either side of it. Shiny tin cups were full of cold, creamy milk from the cellar, and the big plat-ter was heaped with honey-colored vanity cakes.

The cakes were not sweet, but they were rich and crisp, and hollow inside. Each one was like a great bubble. The crisp bits of it melted on the tongue.

They ate and ate of those vanity cakes.

They said they had never tasted anything so good, and they asked Ma what they were.

“Vanity cakes,” said Ma. "Because they are all puffed up, like vanity, with nothing solid inside."

There were so many vanity cakes that they ate till they could eat no more, and they drank all the sweet, cold milk they could hold. Then the party was over. All the girls but Nellie said thank you for the party. Nellie was still mad.

Laura did not care. Christy squeezed her and said in her ear, “I never had such a good time! And it just served Nellie right!”

Deep down inside her Laura felt satisfied when she thought of Nellie dancing on the creek bank.

It was Saturday night and Pa sat on the doorstep, smoking his after-supper pipe.

Laura and Mary sat close on either side of him. Ma, with Carrie on her lap, rocked gently to and fro, just inside the doorway.

The winds were still. The stars hung low and bright. The dark sky was deep beyond the stars, and Plum Creek talked softly to itself.

“They told me in town this afternoon that there will be preaching in the new church tomorrow,” said Pa. “I met the home missionary, Reverend Alden, and he wanted us to be sure to come. I told him we would.”

“Oh, Charles,” Ma exclaimed, “we haven't been to church for so long!”

Laura and Mary had never seen a church.

But they knew from Ma's voice that going to church must be better than a party. After a while Ma said, “I am so glad I finished my new dress.”

“You will look sweet as a posy in it,” Pa told her. “We must start early.”

Next morning was a hurry. Breakfast was a hurry, work was a hurry, and Ma hurried about dressing herself and Carrie. She called up the ladder in a hurrying voice: “Come on down, girls. I'll tie your ribbons.”

They hurried down. Then they stood and stared at Ma. She was perfectly beautiful in her new dress. It was black-and-white calico, a narrow stripe of white, then a wider stripe of black lines and white lines no wider than threads. Up the front it was buttoned with black buttons. And the skirt was pulled back and lifted up to puffs and shirrings behind.

Crocheted lace edged the little stand-up collar. Crocheted lace spread out in a bow on Ma's breast, and the gold breast-pin held the collar and the bow. Ma's face was lovely. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright.

She turned Laura and Mary around and quickly tied the ribbons on their braids. Then she took Carrie's hand. They all went out on the doorstep and Ma locked the door.

Carrie looked like one of the little angel-birds in the Bible. Her dress and her tiny sunbonnet were white and all trimmed with lace.

Her eyes were big and solemn; her golden curls hung by her cheeks and peeped from under the bonnet behind.

Then Laura saw her own pink ribbons on Mary's braids. She clapped her hand over her mouth before a word came out. She scrooged and looked down her own back. Mary's blue ribbons were on her braids!

She and Mary looked at each other and did not say a word. Ma, in her hurry, had made a mistake. They hoped she would not notice.

Laura was so tired of pink and Mary was so tired of blue. But Mary had to wear blue because her hair was golden and Laura had to wear pink because her hair was brown.

Pa came driving the wagon from the stable.

He had brushed Sam and David till they shone in the morning sunshine. They stepped proudly, tossing their heads, and their manes and tails rippled.

There was a clean blanket on the wagon seat and another spread on the bottom of the wagon box. Pa carefully helped Ma climb up over the wheel. He lifted Carrie to Ma's lap.

Then he tossed Laura into the wagon box, and her braids flew out.

“Oh dear!” Ma exclaimed. “I put the wrong ribbons on Laura's hair!”

“It'll never be noticed on a trotting horse!”

said Pa. So Laura knew she could wear the blue ribbons.

Sitting beside Mary on the clean blanket in the wagon bottom, she pulled her braids over her shoulder. So did Mary, and they smiled at each other. Laura could see the blue whenever she looked down, and Mary could see the pink.

Pa was whistling, and when Sam and David started he began to sing.

"Oh, every Sunday morning My wife is by my side

A-waiting for the wagon,

And we'll all take a ride!"

“Charles,” Ma said, softly, to remind him that this was Sunday. Then they all sang together,

"There is a happy land,

Far, far away,

Where saints in glory stand,

Bright, bright as day!"

Plum Creek came out from the willow shadows and spread wide and flat and twinkling in the sunshine. Sam and David trotted through the sparkling shallows. Glittering drops flew up, and waves splashed from the wheels.

Then they were away on the endless prairie.

The wagon rolled softly along the road that hardly made a mark on the green grasses.

Birds sang their morning songs.

Bees

hummed. Great yellow bumblebees went bumbling from flower to flower, and big grasshoppers flew whirring up and away.

Too soon they came to town. The blacksmith shop was shut and still. The doors of the stores were closed. A few dressed-up men and women, with their dressed-up children, walked along the edges of dusty Main Street.

They were all going toward the church.

The church was a new building not far from the schoolhouse. Pa drove toward it through the prairie grass. It was like the schoolhouse, except that on its roof was a tiny room with no walls and nothing in it.

“What's that?” Laura asked.

“Don't point, Laura,” said Ma. “It's a belfry.”

Pa stopped the wagon against the high porch of the church. He helped Ma out of the wagon, but Laura and Mary just stepped over the side of the wagon box. They all waited there while Pa drove into the shade of the church, unhitched Sam and David and tied them to the wagon box.

People were coming through the grass, climbing the steps and going into the church.

There was a solemn, low rustling inside it.

At last Pa came. He took Carrie on his arm and walked with Ma into the church. Laura and Mary walked softly, close behind them.

They all sat in a row on a long bench.

Church was exactly like a schoolhouse, except that it had a strange, large, hollow feeling.

Every little noise was loud against the new board walls.

A tall, thin man stood up behind the tall desk on the platform. His clothes were black and his big cravat was black and his hair and the beard that went around his face were dark.

His voice was gentle and kind. All the heads bowed down. The man's voice talked to God for a long time, while Laura sat perfectly still and looked at the blue ribbons on her braids.

Suddenly, right beside her, a voice said,

“Come with me.”

Laura almost jumped out of her skin. A pretty lady stood there, smiling out of soft blue eyes. The lady said again, “Come with me, little girls. We are going to have a Sunday-school class.”

Ma nodded at them, so Laura and Mary slid down from the bench. They had not known there was going to be school on Sunday.

The lady led them to a corner. All the girls from school were there, looking questions at one another. The lady pulled benches around to make a square pen. She sat down and took Laura and Christy beside her. When the others were settled on the square of benches, the lady said her name was Mrs. Tower, and she asked their names. Then she said, “Now, I'm going to tell you a story!”

Laura was very pleased. But Mrs. Tower be-gan, “It is all about a little baby, born long ago in Egypt. His name was Moses.”

So Laura did not listen any more. She knew all about Moses in the bulrushes. Even Carrie knew that.

After the story, Mrs. Tower smiled more than ever, and said, “Now we'll all learn a Bible verse! Won't that be nice?”

“Yes, ma'am,” they all said. She told a Bible verse to each girl in turn. They were to remember the verses and repeat them to her next Sunday. That was their Sunday-school lesson.

When it was Laura's turn, Mrs. Tower cuddled her and smiled almost as warm and sweet as Ma. She said, “My very littlest girl must have a very small lesson. It will be the shortest verse in the Bible!”

Then Laura knew what it was. But Mrs.

Tower's eyes smiled and she said, “It is just two words!” She said them, and asked, “Now do you think you can remember that for a whole week?”

Laura was surprised at Mrs. Tower. Why, she remembered long Bible verses and whole songs! But she did not want to hurt Mrs.

Tower's feelings. So she said, “Yes, ma'am.”

“That's my little girl!” Mrs. Tower said. But Laura was Ma's little girl. “I'll tell you again, to help you remember. Just two words,” said Mrs. Tower. “Now can you say them after me?”

Laura squirmed.

“Try,” Mrs. Tower urged her. Laura's head bowed lower and she whispered the verse.

“That's right!” Mrs. Tower said. “Now will you do your best to remember, and tell me next Sunday?”

Laura nodded.

After that everyone stood up. They all opened their mouths and tried to sing

“Jerusalem, the Golden.” Not many of them knew the words or the tune. Miserable squig-gles went up Laura's backbone and the insides of her ears crinkled. She was glad when they all sat down again.

Then the tall, thin man stood up and talked.

Laura thought he never would stop talking.

She looked through the open windows at butterflies going where they pleased. She watched the grasses blowing in the wind. She listened to the wind whining thin along the edges of the roof. She looked at the blue hair ribbons.

She looked at each of her finger nails and ad-mired how the fingers of her hands would fit together. She stuck her fingers out straight, so they looked like the corner of a log house. She looked at the underneath of shingles, overhead. Her legs ached from dangling still.