2018.06.12

It's Tuesday.

Pa said that only two. Mary said to him that he made three because he was brown too. Laura said that Pa wasn’t little. And she asked Pa when they were going to see a papoose. Ma exclaimed goodness and asked Laura what she wanted to see an Indian baby for and then asked her to put on her sun bonnet and forget such nonsense. Laura’s sun bonnet hung down her back. She pulled it up by its strings, and its sides came past her cheeks. When her sun bonnet was on she could see only what was in front of her, and that was why she was always pushing it back and letting it hang by its strings tied around her throat. She put her sunbonnet on when Ma told her to, but she did not forget the papoose. This was Indian country and she didn’t know why she didn’t see Indians. She knew she would see them sometime, though. Pa said so, but she was getting tired of waiting. Pa had taken the canvas wagon-top off the house, and now he was ready to put the roof on. For days and days he had been hauling logs from the creek bottoms and splitting them into thin, long slabs. Piles of slabs lay all around the house and slabs stood against it. He asked Ma to come out of the house. He told her that he didn’t want to risk anything falling on her or Carrie. Ma answered to ask Pa to wait till she put away the china shepherdess. In a minute she came out, with a quilt and her mending and Baby Carrie. She spread the quilt on the shady grass by the stable, and sat there to do her mending and watch Carrie play.