Laura was a big girl, seven years old. She was too big to cry. But she could not help asking, “Pa, did you have to give him Pet and Patty? Did you, Pa?”
Pa’s arm drew her close to him in a cuddly hug.
“Why, little half-pint,” Pa said. “Pet and Patty like to travel. They are little Indian ponies, Laura, and plowing is too hard work for them. They will be much happier, traveling out west. You wouldn’t want to keep them here, breaking their hearts on a plow. Pet and Patty will go on traveling, and with those big oxen I can break up a great big field and have it ready for wheat next spring.
“A good crop of wheat will bring us more money than we’ve ever had, Laura. Then we’ll have horses, and new dresses, and everything you can want.”
Laura did not say anything. She felt better with Pa’s arm around her, but she did not want anything except to keep Pet and Patty and Bunny, the long-eared colt.
Chapter 2
The House in the Ground
Early in the morning Pa helped Mr. Hanson move the wagon bows and cover onto Mr. Hanson’s wagon. Then they brought everything out of the dugout house, up the bank, and they packed it in the covered wagon.
Mr. Hanson offered to help move the things from Pa’s wagon into the dugout, but Ma said, “No, Charles. We will move in when you come back.”
So Pa hitched Pet and Patty to Mr. Hanson’s wagon. He tied Bunny behind it, and he rode away to town with Mr. Hanson.
Laura watched Pet and Patty and Bunny going away. Her eyes smarted and her throat ached. Pet and Patty arched their necks, and their manes and tails rippled in the wind. They went away gaily, not knowing that they were never coming back.
The creek was singing to itself down among the willows, and the soft wind bent the grasses over the top of the bank. The sun was shining and all around the wagon was clean, wide space to be explored.
The first thing was to untie Jack from the wagon wheel. Mr. Hanson’s two dogs had gone away, and Jack could run about as he pleased. He was so glad that he jumped up against Laura to lick her face and made her sit down hard. Then he ran down the path and Laura ran after him.
Ma picked up Carrie and said: “Come, Mary. Let’s go look at the dugout.”
Jack got to the door first. It was open. He looked in, and then he waited for Laura.
All around that door green vines were growing out of the grassy bank, and they were full of flowers. Red and blue and purple and rosy-pink and white and striped flowers all had their throats wide open as if they were singing glory to the morning. They were morning-glory flowers.
Laura went under those singing flowers into the dugout. It was one room, all white. The earth walls had been smoothed and whitewashed. The earth floor was smooth and hard.
When Ma and Mary stood in the doorway the light went dim. There was a small greased-paper window beside the door. But the wall was so thick that the light from the window stayed near the window.
That front wall was built of sod. Mr. Hanson had dug out his house, and then he had cut long strips of prairie sod and laid them on top of one another, to make the front wall. It was a good, thick wall with not one crack in it. No cold could get through that wall.
Ma was pleased. She said, “It’s small, but it’s clean and pleasant.” Then she looked up at the ceiling and said, “Look, girls!”
The ceiling was made of hay. Willow boughs had been laid across and their branches woven together, but here and there the hay that had been spread on them showed through.
“Well!” Ma said.
They all went up the path and stood on the roof of that house. No one could have guessed it was a roof. Grass grew on it and waved in the wind just like all the grasses along the creek bank.
“Goodness,” said Ma. “Anybody could walk over this house and never know it’s here.”
But Laura spied something. She bent over and parted the grasses with her hands, and then she cried: “I’ve found the stovepipe hole! Look, Mary! Look!”
Ma and Mary stopped to look, and Carrie leaned out from Ma’s arm and looked, and Jack came pushing to look. They could look right down into the whitewashed room under the grass.
They looked at it till Ma said, “We’ll brush out the place before Pa comes back. Mary and Laura, you bring the water-pails.”
Mary carried the large pail and Laura the small one, and they went down the path again. Jack ran ahead and took his place by the door.
Ma found a willow-twig broom in a corner, and she brushed the walls carefully. Mary watched Carrie to keep her from falling down into the creek, and Laura took the little pail and went for water.
She hoppity-skipped down the stair-steps to the end of a little bridge across the creek. The bridge was one wide plank. Its other end was under a willow tree.