I have to restrain myself from starting this post in my finest Dickensian style: “Alone: In which the family begins to speculate about how MUCH trouble they’re in, and how truly dire this winter will be.”
We open this chapter with Laura and Mary working on their needlework projects in the sunny front room of the story building, expecting the company of friends Minnie Johnson and Mary Power. Mary Ingalls, in talking about the possibility of going to college, tells Laura she wishes that Laura could go to college, too. Laura counters that it’s likely she’ll be teaching school, and “I guess you care more about it than I do.”
Mary, in one of those rare moments of self-actualization, declares she really does want to go, and study “on and on.” She really hopes and prays that college will be in her future, and Laura encourages her.
Right until Laura can no longer see the stitches in the lace she’s knitting. The light is gone, the “air was gray and the note of the wind was rising.”
Pa had been out at the claim to haul in hay, and there’s a moment when all the women in the house, Ma included, fear for his safety. But before they can worry too much about him, Pa appears through the back door, laughing about his near miss.
Ma’s not laughing. But there’s not much she can do about Pa at this point, anyway, I suspect.
He goes out to do the chores while Ma gets dinner, and Ma’s question about whether the trains will get through stops the action. Pa responds cheerfully about how they’d lived without a railroad before, but gives Ma a warning look. And we’re all now worrying about the trains, in that one warning look Pa gives Ma.
As if it’s not enough to be enduring the blizzard, after supper, Pa uses the fiddle to repeat the melody of the winds outside. Ma’s had enough for the day, and quietly says, “We’ll likely hear enough of that without your playing it, Charles.” I get the feeling that Ma’s a little tired of Pa and his cheeriness.
Laura asks for music to warm them up, and Pa plays a variety of marches and jigs as Laura and Carrie dance, and even Ma’s toes are tapping.
At bedtime, no one wants to leave the cozy room with its music, but they dutifully march upstairs to a room so cold the nails in the ceiling are fuzzy with frost, making Laura feel “much colder.” Laura wraps hot irons from the stove in flannels to warm the beds, and the girls change quickly. Mary ducks under the covers first, and in another rare I’m-a-real-person moment, says, “God will hear us if we say our prayers under the covers.” Must’ve been cold!!
While Mary and Carrie snuggle down in their beds, shivering, trying to warm up, Laura goes to the window. She wants to see if she can see any kind of light at all. But “in the roaring night outside, there was not one speck of light.”
Mary’s grumpy at this point, and entreats Laura to come to bed to help warm it. The pair talk for a minute about Laura’s inability to see even the light from their own downstairs window. Carrie, with the help of the warm stove pipe beside her bed and the warm flatiron, was asleep as Ma brought Grace upstairs to tuck in next to her.
Ma asks if her girls are warm enough. They say they’re getting there.
And Laura contemplates this feeling of aloneness as she settles into bed. No light can be seen; no cry from outside, besides that constant wind, can be heard. The storm, she thought, had wild voices and an unnatural light of its own.
Though she was finally warm, Laura shivers. The family is truly, truly, alone.