2018.08.22

It's Wednesday.

Pa said that he had thought they would all have a treat. Laura’s mouth watered, and Ma’s eyes shone softly at Pa. He had remembered how she longed for pickles. That wasn’t all. He gave Ma a package and watched her unwrap it and in it was enough pretty calico to make her a dress. She said it was too much. But her face and Pa’s were two beans of joy. Now he hung up his cap and his plaid coat on their pegs. His eyes looked sidewise at Laura and Mary, but that was all. He sat down and stretched out his legs to the fire. Mary sat down, too, and folded her hands in her lap. But Laura climbed onto Pa’s knee and beat him with her fists. She asked him where it was, where her present was, beating him. Pa laughed his big laugh, like great bells ringing, and he told her that he believed there was something in his blouse pocket. He took out an oddly shaped package, and very, very slowly he opened it. He told Mary that she was the first because she was so patient. And he gave Mary a comb for her hair. And then he told Laura that was for her. The combs were exactly alike. They were made of black rubber and curved to fit over the top of a little girl’s head. And over the top of the comb lay a flat piece of black rubber, with curving slits cut in it, and in the very middle of it a little five-pointed star was cut out. A bright colored ribbon was drawn underneath, and the color showed through. The ribbon in Mary’s comb was blue, and the ribbon in Laura’s comb was red. Ma smoothed back their hair and slid the combs into it, and there in the golden hair, exactly over the middle of Mary’s forehead, was a little blue star. And in Laura’s brown hair, over the middle of her forehead, was a little red star. Laura looked at Mary’s star, and Mary looked at Laura’s star, and they laughed with joy. They had never had anything so pretty.