Laura was home. Home! What a wonderful word. What a wonderful feeling! Laura felt better already, knowing that she was home for good and did not have to return to the Brewster’s.
Everything was better, even the chores that she had disliked before she enjoyed today because she was home. When the Saturday jobs were done, Laura looked forward to a visit from Mary Power, for she knew that Mary would want to visit with her! Mary didn’t come though and Laura made up her mind to just go over to see Mary when she heard them.
Sleigh bells.
Not the rich sound of the sleigh bells that Prince and Lady wore, but sleigh bells all the same. And that’s when she saw them. All of her friends and even some that she didn’t know, riding up and down the streets in their cutters and sleighs. They had forgotten Laura. She settled down to her crocheting, all the while listening to the sleigh bells.
Even on Sunday, when Laura had been looking forward to seeing Ida at church, Ida was home sick with a cold. That afternoon, Laura once again heard the sleigh bells ringing and laughter floating on the wind (isn’t that a wonderful sound?). She was feeling very forgotten and could not stop herself from hearing the fun and thinking about being left out.
Laura could hardly bear it, when suddenly she heard the ringing of bells stop right at their door! She ran to open it and there stood Prince and Lady. And Almanzo…with an invitation to go sleigh riding.
And what follows is one of my favorite passages:
“I didn’t know your eyes were so blue,” Almanzo said.
“It’s my white hood,” Laura told him. “I always wore my dark one to Brewster’s.” She gave a gasp, and laughed aloud.
“What’s so funny?” Almanzo asked, smiling.
“It’s a joke on me,” Laura said. “I didn’t intend to go with you anymore but I forgot. Why did you come?”
“I thought maybe you’d change your mind after you watched the crowd go by,” Almanzo answered. Then they laughed together.
And so it begins. 
Laura was so happy that she had to sing (I love that too).
I liked in “A Writer’s Life”, Pamela Hill points out that this is most likely not the first has courted a girl so that he leaves her sitting on Saturday – like she asked on Friday. He pretty much knew that she wasn’t going to want to sit home by herself on Sunday.
I think it is interesting how open Laura suddenly was about how she wasn’t going to go with him and changed her mind.
Great post, Laura.
This book is about the courtship of Laura and Almanzo, and while Laura would never have considered Almanzo to be her beau, others could see it. Almanzo allowed her to see the others in DeSmet pairing off and sleighriding, and he knew that her seeing this would make her long for a ride. Funny that she felt left out, and none of her good friends thought to stop and ask her along. Why? Of course, they knew that Almanzo was the one to take her sleighing, and sure enough, he did. In the most subtle of ways, Laura the author is telling us that it was not just the sleigh ride that Laura the girl liked, it was the owner of that fine team of horses!
Love this post, and love this chapter – an ending of the Brewster horror and a beginning of Official Romance, with Jingle Bells thrown in. What’s not to like?! “For some reason, her heart jumped” when hearing the sleigh bells is a brilliant way of conveying the shift in Laura’s feelings which she hasn’t even fully acknowledged herself yet. I also love the way it captures the way you can be totally fixed on just one thing as your heart’s desire (in this case, finishing the term and being at home again) and as soon as you’ve got it, find that actually, hmmmm, everything is not quite perfect after all. I didn’t say that anywhere near as well as the chapter does but hopefully you know what I mean.
One thing though – and I admit I’m over on the picky desk with this one – Laura says everyone has forgotten her while she’s been away, as if the sleighing parties are something which has been going on while she’s been at school. But presumably they’ve been happening at weekends, and she’s been home every weekend… I don’t know why that bothers me but it does, so I’m hoping someone will bring some insight to this and help me out with an explanation!
Eddie, this is just a guess, but I wonder if it was more the “pairing off” that had happened while she was away and not so much the sleigh riding? Still, t you’re right, the sleigh parties should have been going on all winter.
@ Eddie
I don’t think that there were any sleighing parties before that Saturday. It was just too cold for any pleasure rides. Think of LIWs descriptions in the previous chapters: Usually it was too cold to talk, when she and Almanzo made their trips to the Brewsters or back home. And there was this cold wind as well. Who would like to go sleighing in this cold just for fun?
It was not before the last chapter, to be exact the Sunday afternoon of Laura’s last trip to the Brewsters, that the weather grew more pleasant. And if Laura’s friend would have met for sleigh rides this afternoon, she and Almanzo were probably already on their way to the Brewsters.
One of my favorite chapters…reaching, not just seeing, the light at the end of the dark Brewster tunnel, and the true beginning of the courtship, when Laura goes riding with Almanzo just because she wants to, not because she has to get home.
Melanie, I have always thought that was interesting too. How many girls would be so honest about that?
And Eddie, I never thought about it like that; I had never gotten the impression that the sleighing had been going on, but just that no one thought to invite her (this first time) even though she is home. It will be interesting to see what others have to say about this.
But I have wondered who of her old friends Laura thought might ask her. This was obviously a “couples” thing; did she not mind being a third wheel, or did she have someone in mind, or what?
Maybe she was too busy when she was home on the weekends to notice. Remember, she had to do her laundry and mending, help with the housework, etc – and she would have been on the way back to Brewster’s on Sunday, so she probably wouldn’t have known much about the Sunday parties. She would have had a little more idle time after she got home – enough to watch the party out the window and stew a little bit,
I’m picky too, and I have also noticed and wondered about that. It seems very unlikely that she would not have noticed the bells weekend after weekend. The house isn’t that big and there isn’t much insulation. Even from the kitchen she would have heard the bells.
And unlikely that the sleigh rides wouldn’t have started earlier that winter … or even in previous winters. (The books give the impression that all the ‘older girls’ (and boys,for that matter) in the class (Laura, Mary, Minnie, Ida, Nellie — and later Florence) are exactly the same age, and would be starting to date/have beaus at exactly the same time. I would suspect that this was NOT the case.)
Maybe this WAS the first time time … and all plotted by Almanzo to get Laura to go out with him.
Great comments by all. I want to take it as Laura gives it in the story. Maybe the sleighriding by the other older boys and girls had really not started earlier. She speaks of Mary Power as if she were a best friend, and the others did know she was home on weekends, for she would visit Mary Power, and see Ida in church. So my guess is if they were sleighing before, she was also sleighing when she rode with Almanzo back to Brewster’s on Sundays, so she was not left out before.. Now it is different, and since she had told Almanzo she would not be riding with him anymore, he thought to himself “Oh? We’ll just see about that.”
Still, a charming chapter.
Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! It have never occurred to me that this was the first party (eg because of the weather), or that if they’d been going on before she would have been busy / on her way back to the Brewsters’. I also love the theory that although Laura presents her ‘left out’ feelings as being about sleighing they are really about not being in a couple, which fits in so well with the changing nature of her feelings for Almanzo in this chapter and further into the book (TLynn, maybe that one answers your query as well?).
Either way, I can sleep easy when reading this chapter in future – this is why I love the readalongs