Free The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder Page A

around.”
    “Maybe there is,” said Ma, going into the kitchen again.
    It was so wonderful to be there, safe at home, sheltered from the winds and the cold. Laura thought that this must be a little bit like Heaven, where the weary are at rest. She could not imagine that Heaven was better than being where she was, slowly growing warm and comfortable, sipping the hot, sweet, ginger tea, seeing Ma, and Grace, and Pa and Carrie, and Mary all enjoying their own cups of it and hearing the storm that could not touch them here.
    “I ' m glad you didn't have to come for us, Pa,”
    Laura said drowsily. “I was hoping you were safe.”
    “So was I,” Carrie told Pa, snuggling against him.
    “I remembered that Christmas, on Plum Creek, when you didn't get home.”
    “I did, too,” Pa said grimly. “When Cap Garland came into Fuller's and said you were all heading out to the open prairie, you can bet I made tracks for a rope and lantern.”
    “I ' m glad we got in all right,” Laura woke up to say.
    “Yes, we'd have had a posse out looking for you, though we'd have been hunting for a needle in a haystack,” said Pa.
    “Best forget about it,” said Ma.
    “Well, he did the best he could,” Pa went on. “Cap Garland's a smart boy.”
    “And now, Laura and Carrie, you're going to bed and get some rest,” said Ma. “A good long sleep is what you need.”

THREE DAYS' BLIZZARD
    When Laura's eyes opened in the morning
    she saw that every clinched nail in the roof overhead was furry-white with frost. Thick frost covered every windowpane to its very top. The daylight was still and dim inside the stout walls that kept out the howling blizzard.
    Carrie was awake too. She peeked anxiously at Laura from under the quilts on the bed by the stovepipe where she and Grace slept. She blew out a breath to see how cold it was. Even close to the stovepipe her breath froze white in the air. But that house was so well-built that not one bit of snow had been driven through the walls or the roof.
    Laura was stiff and sore and so was Carrie. But morning had come and they must get up. Sliding out of bed into the cold that took her breath away, Laura snatched up her dress and shoes and hurried to the top of the stairs. “Ma, can we dress down there?” she called, thankful for the warm, long, red flannels under her flannel nightgown.
    “Yes, Pa's at the stable,” Ma answered.
    The cookstove was warming the kitchen and the lamplight made it seem even warmer. Laura put on her petticoats and dress and shoes. Then she brought down her sisters' clothes and warmed them and carried Grace downstairs wrapped in quilts. The y were all dressed and washed when Pa came in with the milk half frozen in the pail.
    After he had got his breath and melted the frost and snow from his mustaches, he said, “Well, the hard winter's begun.”
    “Why, Charles,” Ma said. “It isn't like you to worry about winter weather.”
    “I ' m not worrying,” Pa replied. “But it's going to be a hard winter.”
    “Well, if it is,” said Ma, “here we are in town where we can get what we need from the stores even in a storm.”
    There would be no more school till the blizzard was over. So, after the housework was done, Laura and Carrie and Mary studied their lessons and then settled down to sew while Ma read to them.
    Once she looked up and listened and said, “It sounds like a regular three days' blizzard.”
    “Then there won't be any more school this week,”
    said Laura. She wondered what Mary and Minnie were doing. The front room was so warm that the frost on the windows had melted a little and turned to ice.
    When she breathed on it to clear a peephole she could see against the glass the blank white swirling snow.
    She could not even see Fuller's Hardware store, across the street, where Pa had gone to sit by the stove and talk with the other men.
    Up the street, past Couse's Hardware store and the Beardsley Hotel and Barker's grocery, Royal Wilder's feed store