The click of the young woman's shoes on the wood planks of the store fronts echoed as she pushed her way through the crowds of people in her way as she headed to the post office. When she reached the window, she smiled at the elderly lady and laid her card on the counter.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Smith," the young lady said.

"Oh, Miss Wilder! Good afternoon. Lovely weather today, isn't it?"

"Yes ma'am," Jenny replied with a grin, then waited expectantly.

"How can I help you, dear?"

Jenny picked up the card and showed it to the gray-haired woman, "You have something for me today, Mrs. Smith."

"Oh, land sakes alive!" she exclaimed as she rose from her chair and turned her back to Jenny. She fumbled around, grumbling about the trials of getting older, and finally turned back to Jenny, letter in hand. She placed it on the counter and pushed it under the bottom of the window, and Jenny reached out and pulled it to her. Instantly she recognized the handwriting on the envelope and she glanced up to Mrs. Smith with a grin. She had been hoping the letter would be from him.

"Thank you, Mrs. Smith!" she said, and turned and walked a few paces away, while tearing open the envelope. Excitedly, she pulled out the letter and unfolded it and began reading.

"My Dearest Jenny,

Thank you for your last letter, my dear, as it was exactly the push I needed to get through final examinations. I'm proud to inform you that I passed with flying colors, and my formal education is finally over. I am coming home to you, at last. It hardly seems possible that it has only been a year since my last visit home, as it feels as though it has been three or four times that long ago.

Upon my return, there are things we need to discuss. For one, I've been offered several jobs by many different prominent newspaper agencies. New York, Chicago, and St. Louis are just three examples. I've given no one an answer for sure, as I feel this is a decision you and I should be making together.

Also upon my return, I intend to ask your Uncle Almanzo. After these long years of being mostly apart from you, I don't know if I can wait another day. I love you, Jenny, and I hope that you will be waiting on the train platform when I return home on June 25th

Yours,

Jeb"

Jenny pulled the letter to her breast and sighed happily. He was coming home at last! She folded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope, then picked up her long skirt in one hand, and ran back through the throngs of people and headed home.

Though she was now twenty-one and old enough to live on her own, Jenny still lived with her Uncle Almanzo, Aunt Laura, and her cousin Rose. City life had been hard for all of the Wilders to get used to after leaving the peace and quiet of Walnut Grove. The conditions on which they left the country town certainly had not helped any of them. Eight years ago, the town had been destroyed and the Wilders had traveled for months afterward with the Carter family and Mr. Edwards before finally settling in Mansfield. The got settled in town and lived over a seamstress shop that Laura opened, until they had had enough money to purchase land to start farming again. Laura and Jenny still worked at the seamstress shop, though now it was Jenny who put in the most hours there. The Carters had only gone as far as the edge of the city, where John Carter set up a blacksmith shop and eventually built a home for his family. Mr. Edwards said good-bye to his "Half-Pint" and the rest of the family, and proclaimed that he was headed out west to find his fortune in gold.

Jenny and Jeb had always been close, since they first met eleven years ago in Walnut Grove, but after all they had gone through with the destruction of Walnut Grove and the months of looking for a new place to settle, the two became closer than ever, and after settling into city life, they had became all but inseparable, until Jeb had gone off to college. They had talked about marriage before he left, but he had told her there was no way he could ask for her hand until he was ready to provide for her. Now it seemed that time and come, and Jenny couldn't stop grinning.

"Well, don't you look like the cat who ate the canary," Laura commented when Jenny entered the shop.

Jenny took off her hat and pulled her long brown hair back behind her shoulders. She set the hat on the counter and turned and looked back at her aunt, who was sitting in one of the rockers hemming a skirt.

"Jeb is coming home," Jenny said excitedly.

Laura set her sewing down and grinned at her niece. "Oh, Jenny," she said. "You must be so excited."

"Oh, I am!" she said as she sat in the rocker next to her aunt. "He'll be home on the 25th- only three days away!"

The bell on the door sounded, signaling that someone had opened it, and both women looked up to see Rose, a furious look on her face.

"Rose!" Laura cried as Rose slammed the door shut.

"I've had it with that boy, Mama!" she hollered with her fists clenched at her sides.

"Rose, dear, please stop shouting, and just tell me what happened," Laura said in a calming tone.

Rose huffed, and sat in the last empty chair beside her mother and proceeded to tell the women what "that boy" had done to her at school today. As Laura listened intently, Jenny looked again at her precious letter, and remembered when that boy had done his fair share of teasing her. She smiled fondly as she thought of the first time she met Jeb Carter back in Walnut Grove.

TBC