Prairie Girl by William Anderson

Author:William Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Laura, Manly, and Rose

AFTER THE LONG, HARD WINTER, Pa and Ma enrolled Mary in a college for blind students in Vinton, Iowa. Pa and Ma traveled with Mary by train to settle her in the school. There Mary was taught Braille, studied music, and learned crafts. Every evening as Laura studied her lessons at home, she imagined Mary, far away, doing the same.

Laura became the best student in the De Smet school. She studied reading, geography, spelling, arithmetic, history, and writing. She also had fun with her classmates. She was still shy, but she went skating and attended parties. Laura wanted to be fashionable, and she earned money for clothes by sewing for the dressmaker in De Smet.

In De Smet the finest team of horses was driven by Almanzo Wilder, one of the young homesteaders who had gone in search of wheat the previous winter. Each time she saw them, Laura wished she might ride behind those horses. One day at church, Laura was surprised when Almanzo asked if he could walk her home. Laura was so tongue-tied, she could hardly speak as they walked together. He told her he was from New York State, but he had a homestead north of De Smet.

Soon after Laura met Almanzo, she passed a teacher’s examination and was asked to teach for two months at a school twelve miles from De Smet. Laura hadn’t expected to teach so soon, but the school offered her twenty dollars a month in wages. Even though she did not want to leave home to teach, she knew that her earnings would help keep Mary in college.

The Bouchie school was in an abandoned shanty sitting alone on the white, snow-covered prairie. When Laura met her five pupils, she discovered that two of them were older than she was. She wondered if she could teach them all. But Laura quickly organized the little school into classes and assigned lessons.

Laura’s first week teaching at the Bouchie school was lonely. She lived with Mr. and Mrs. Bouchie in their shanty near the school. Each evening Laura continued studying her own lessons, but she missed Pa and Ma and her sisters. On Friday of her first week as a teacher, Laura dreaded spending the weekend so far from home.

Just as Laura dismissed her students on Friday, she heard sleigh bells jingling across the snowy prairie. Almanzo, whom Laura now called Manly, had arrived in his cutter to drive her home for the weekend!

Each Friday Manly drove Laura home. Every Sunday he returned her to the Bouchies. Each week Laura grew more confident teaching. She was always homesick, but her students liked her and she liked them. They were sorry when the term ended and Laura returned to De Smet and became a student once again.

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