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. &...
He had to stand on a box to lift the heavy collars onto the horses' shoulders and to slip the bridles over their ears, but he knew how to drive. He had learned when he was little. Father wouldn't let him touch the colts, nor drive the spirited young horses, but now that he was old enough to work ...
"A fine day, as fine as our wedding day just a year ago, and it's a new start just as that was. And a new home, if it is some smaller. “We'll be all right now. You'll see! 'Everything evens up in the end. The rich man”' His voice trailed silent but Laura couldn't help fini...
When the dishes were washed and the beds made, there was always plenty to do and to see and to listen to. They hunted for birds' nests in the tall grass and when they found them the mother birds squawked and scolded. Sometimes they touched a nest gently, and all in an inst...
This was a two-story schoolhouse, with two teachers. The small children were in the downstairs room, and the older ones upstairs. Laura and Carrie were in the upstairs room. It seemed strangely large and empty, without the small children. Yet almost...
Thenails in the roof were white with frost, the windowpanes were gray. Scraping a peephole only showed the blank, whirling whiteness against the other side of the glass. The stout house quivered and shook; the wind roared and howled. Ma kept the rag rugs tightly against the bottom of the doors, a...
She put them in a tub of water, to soften them and keep them soft. Then she sat in the chair by the side of the tub, and braided the straws. She took up several of them, knotted their ends together, and began to braid. The straws were different lengths, and when she came n...
Grasses were golden-stemmed, and over the prairie they spread a coverlet of buff and tan and brown and warm brownish gray; only the sloughs were darker with green. The birds were fewer, and hurrying. Often at sunset a long flock talked anxiously, high above Silver Lake, and instead of sinking to ...
Wild roses were blooming in great sweeps of pink through the prairie grasses, but Laura saw them only in the early mornings when she and Pa were hurrying to work. The soft morning sky was changing to a clearer blue, and already a few wisps of summer cloud were trailing acr...