Rose Wilder thought her heart would break. Drew Lay, the boy she had a crush on since she first saw him, said that he thought that her cousin Jenny is pretty. When Rose asked if Drew thought she was pretty, all Drew said was that she was 'a cute kid' not 'a pretty young girl'. She ran inside as quickly as she could.
"Ok people, here she comes...On three, yell surprise...One...Two...Three..." Almanzo began.
Rose burst through the door in tears.
"SURPRISE!" Everyone yelled...When they saw it was Rose, there was dead silence...Laura went to her daughter as she noticed she was crying.
"Rose?...What's wrong?" Laura began.
"Drew doesn't like me because I'm not pretty!" The eight-year-old sobs and runs up to her room and locks the door.
"Rose!" Laura calls up to her, standing on the staircase.
Arrah layed her hand on Laura's shoulder. "Is it all right if I go up and talk to her?...I deal with the same thing sometimes..."
"If you think it might help her..." Laura said.
Arrah trugded up the wooden stairs to the room that Rose and Jenny shared and knocked on the door. "Rose?...Rose, can I come in and talk to you, please?" Rose ignores her. "Well if you don't open the door, then I'm coming in after you." Arrah thought. She takes a hair pin out of her hair bun and picks the lock with it. She opens the door and sees Rose crying on the bed. Arrah sits down beside her and envelops Rose in a hug.
"Rose, shhh...It's all right..." Arrah tries to comfort her. "It's all right."
"Drew doesn't like me because I'm not pretty!" She wails.
"Don't say that Rose...You're very pretty."
"You're just saying that!...I'm not pretty, my forehead's to long, my hair's an ugly color...I'm ugly!" She says, calming down a little.
"Rose, do you know I deal with the same thing?...Do you know what I don't like about myself?"
"What?" She says, and sniffs.
"I think my eyebrows are to thick...I don't like my stupid, little, ugly, button nose. I think only children should have cute little button noses" Arrah said, smiling and tapping Rose's nose..."And Rose, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I look into the looking-glass and I just don't think I look pretty or feel pretty..."
"But you're beautiful...I wanted to say that to you when I first met you..." Rose said.
"That just shows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder..."
"But how come Drew doesn't like me?"
"Sweet pea,...it's not that he doesn't like you as a friend...he does...It's just, he doesn't like you in the way that you like him..."
"He likes Jenny..."
"Maybe Drew just wants someone more his age."
"But my Ma and Pa are ten years apart, and they love each other."..."I could make it work, Drew could love me." She thought.
"But you're not your parents...are you?"
Rose was silent, so Arrah kept on speaking. "Rose, you're going to find a wonderful man someday who will think you're just beautiful...and you are beautiful, Rose. Your parents think you are, I think you are,... but most importantly God thinks you are...Or He wouldn't have created a Rose Wilder...now would He?" She said, smoothing the young girl's hair.
Rose smiled. Arrah hugged her. "God has a very special plan for your life, Rose. I can sense it...But do you know what His plan for your life right now is?"
"What?" She smiled.
"To be the best Rose Wilder you can be!" Arrah smiled. "And I know you can do that." Arrah and Rose went back downstairs and along with everyone else, celebrated Jenny's birthday.
"Thank you so much, Aunt Laura!" Jenny said, holding up a dress that Laura had made her. "Can I start putting my hair up?" She asked eagerly.
"Let's take things one day at a time." Almanzo said, and kissed the top of Jenny's head.
"All right, Uncle Manzo." Jenny smiled.
Arrah gave Jenny her present and Jenny read a few stories out of the book. She finished reading the story about Graham and the snowball bushes.
"My word, Graham!" Hannah Anderson laughed. "What a little devil you were!"
Graham slid down in his seat. The nine-year-old was embarassed that Miss Hannah now knew what Graham did to his grandfather when he was five.
"Jenny, could you please read the story 'The Mean Rooster'?" Arrah asked. "The boys haven't heard it yet, and I wanted you to read it. It's the last story in the booklet."
"Ok." Jenny said and turned to the last story and began to read. "...Like most everyone these days, Arrah Franziska Krolick grew up living on a farm. Her family raised a few chickens for their eggs and for their meat. They had 3 or 4 chickens and one very mean rooster. He would try to attack anyone he could, by sneaking up on a person, flying up on them and beating on them with his wings. He would also try to dig his long spurs into the person he was attacking...One day, the rooster met his match. Both Arrah and her mother were outside one day. And Josephine, Arrah's Ma, was walking down the dirt road. The rooster was out in the yard and he decided to attack the woman. Arrah screamed, "Ma, the rooster is coming!" When Josephine saw that the rooster was after her, she held out her umbrella, that she always carried with her, in front of her to try to keep the rooster at bay. She poked, hoostered, and jostled the rooster to the point of angering him. The rooster tried to fly over the umbrella, so Josephine opened it to keep him from flying over the umbrella and attacking her. After a while, she closed it and began again to poke and hooster and jostle the rooster, which was very, very, very angry by now. So she closed the umbrella and let him fly over. Then, she very nimbly caught him by the neck and whirled him around and around and around till she almost wrung his neck. She threw the rooster across the road and into an open field. The rooster staggered on back home as dizzy as could be. Josephine chuckled with glee and went her way. That mean rooster never bothered her again. You can just imagine why..."
Everyone in the room started dying laughing. Well, everyone except for Leslie.
"What does 'hooster' mean?" He asked.
"'Hooster' or 'Hoster' is a German word. It means to poke or to give a boost. It can also mean to pester..." Arrah said.
"Arrah, I never really asked you this...Why don't you speak with a German accent?" Laura asked.
"Laura, I was born here in America...My Pa and Ma and my older brother Micah came to America from Bavaria, Germany. Micah was but a year old then. They moved to Iowa and lived on their own homestead. Three years later, My brother Amos was born. A year after that, my parents had a baby girl they named Katie, but sadly, she passed away when she was nine months old. Two years after that, my brother Bennet was born. Two years later, I was born. Micah was eight, Amos was five, and Bennet was two. I remained the baby of the family until I turned seven, when my younger sister Callah was born. Pearl was born when Callah turned two...The only reason I know how to speak the language a bit, is my parents and grandparents taught us children the language."