That Silvered Reflection
A Little House on the Prairie Story
Written by: FossilQueen1984
Chapter Soundtrack: Summer form Kikujiro By Joe Hisaishi
Chapter 4: One Roomed Schoolhouse on the Prairie
When they got back to the homestead, to say that Harriet Olesson was in a bad mood was the understatement of the year. How dare that aristocrat refuse her offer of paying off the goods in installments! She was used to paying for everything back in St. Paul on credit, even when Minnesota's state economy had taken a hit. However, Nels had been earning far more as a foreman then, than he was now. She was simply going to have to wait until he accrued enough money and paid back the loans from their journey here until she could flaunt it down at the mercantile. She was quite certain Mr. Ingalls would be on his knees. Even if she did get her grasping hands on that kind of money, it was unlikely she would be waving it around like a fan. Nels would rather roll over and play dead before that ever happened.
Sewing away at her children's clothes while Nellie and Willy tended the garden and the chickens, Harriet was making plans on seeing what the other stores in Walnut Grove. Surely, they would be kinder to commoners such as herself, and hopefully less expensive. It was here Nels walked into the house from the front door hollering, "Honey, I'm home!" Collapsing from exhaustion, Harriet brought him some cold, black coffee and the children sat at his feet, all eager and interested about his day had gone.
Nels closed his eyes and told them about how the overseers had put him to work as a sawyer, and how he had sawed through no less than eleven trees that day. He had gone on to add these trees were twice the width of the dining room table- imagine that if they will! Nellie and Willy imagined all right and were proud to say their father had to be the best sawyer of all in Walnut Grove. After eating a light dinner of coffee, omelets with ham and cheese, it was off to bed. Tomorrow, school!
As any reader of Anne of Green Gables or Stuart Little knows, the one roomed schoolhouse is as iconic to the American (or Canadian) past as is the woman's suffrage movement and the development of the Transcontinental Railroad. With families moving west, education accessibility moved, and areas adapted. The single teacher teaching a large mixed age group was normal, and even then, attendance was not mandatory. Many children from farming families attended only when they were not helping with the plowing or harvesting. Everything was written down on slates with chalk, and there were very few textbooks for students. There were readers for what we would consider English comp/grammar/and Lit. Everything else was learned by rote, that is memorization and recitation until it was burned into your brain. Also, if you stepped out of line, you would have your hands smacked with a ruler, and made to stand in the front of the classroom while your peers mocked you. Also, you might have to "do lines"- that is write on the common blackboard "I will not do x…" a good number of times. In other words, Anne Shirley got off easy for smacking Gilbert Blythe over the head with her slate. In all fairness, he did deserve it!
Wednesday morning came bright and early, and Harriet shooed her children out the door with time to spare. She wanted to go to the nearby homesteads and see if she could hire any of their children to be a farm servant, or in this case homestead servant. It would take all her cunning and fake sweetness to carry the con off, but she was confident she could do this. So wrapped up in her thoughts, she quite failed to notice that the length on her children's clothing still had something to be desired.
The walk from the homesteads to the schoolhouse was not a long one, it took about fifteen minutes to reach on a good day. The Olesons were a comparatively small family, and Nellie and Willy were soon joined by a throng of other homesteader children. They were a mixed bunch, tanned and barefoot. Their clothes were shabby and patched, but otherwise is good repair. There was a lot of jostling and good-natured laughing, for these children were used to hard work and disdained refinement, for it had no place in the rough farming world.
One of the girls, a gangly thing with wild light brown hair and a dress two sizes too big, ran up behind Nellie, shoved her into the weeds, and shouted, "Cooties!" Nellie fell forward in a most unladylike manner but was able to right herself. She was seeing red; nobody made her the butt of a joke. Her beady eyes narrowed as she walked along with the gaggle of children. Willy was talking to some boys his own age, and she was happy for him. He needed to spend less time with her, and more time with them.
Suddenly and quite by surprise, she saw the girl who hit her dead ahead. The girl was standing amongst a group of friends, laughing and making daisy chains with their rough, calloused hands. They were congregated near the back of the schoolhouse. Sneering at how poor they were (comparatively speaking), a sly grin crossed her face. There was a loose thread that had caught itself on some tall weeds, one tug is all it would take. A grin crossed Nellie's face that would curdle milk, this would be so funny!
Spiraling the thread around her finger, she gave it a good hard yank… and the dress began to unfurl! The poor girl didn't even know what was happening until her friends gasped in horror. The girl looked down, and to her abject horror, half her dress was gone! Making matters worse, you could see her under slip and her thin legs. Suddenly, Nellie leapt out of the grass, gave the yarn a good last tug, and the skirt part of the dress (or at least what remained of it at this point), fell to the ground.
Smirking snobbishly, Nellie got in the girl's startled face, and started chanting, "Snipe! Snipe! Long legged snipe!" Viciously, she shoved the girl into the ground, and stepped right onto her back before catching up to her brother. Unbeknownst to Nellie, she had been seen by the teacher, Caroline Ingalls. Mrs. Ingalls knew Coralee Higgins was a rough around the edges sort of girl (her mother was a housemaid and her father was a cattle wrangler for one of the cattle farms south of town), and she had heard about the Olesons from her husband. She was going to have to nip this behavior in the bud. It was almost 8:00 AM. Walking toward the bell tower, she pulled the rope. The school bell rang merrily, and all the children and teenagers filed in, laughing and joking.
Caroline Ingalls was a firm, but kind teacher. She made learning interesting, and she only used corporal punishment if it was really warranted. At the very worst, you wrote lines, stayed in during morning recess, or wore a dunce cap. As everyone filed in, Nellie Oleson had resumed her haughty attitude and waltzed blithely into the school. That was until she felt a firm hand on her shoulder. Looking up at the teacher, she smiled and tried to budge.
"I saw what you did to Coralee, that was cruel. I'm watching you," Caroline told her sharply. Instead of fessing up to what she had done, Nellie merely laughed and tossed her golden ringlets, "I don't know what you're talking about." Instead of believing her, Mrs. Ingalls told Nellie she would not be going to morning recess, and that was the end of the discussion.
Fuming at the injustice of having a teacher who saw right through her lies and manipulations (unlike the teachers back in St. Paul who bent over backwards to accommodate the Olesons in every way possible), Nellie was fuming when she slid in next to Willy. Of course, she could not get back at the teacher, but maybe, just maybe, Mama could.
This delightfully insidious thought cheered her greatly. Now that everyone had settled in, everyone rose to recite "The Pledge of Allegiance" and sing the National Anthem. The school day could now begin in earnest.