On The Banks Of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder Page B

Look!”
    Pa's hands in the water grabbed the fish and lifted him out, flopping. Laura almost fell into the waterfall. They looked at that silvery fat fish and then Pa dropped him into the trap again.
    “Oh, Pa, can't we please stay and catch enough fish for supper!” Laura asked.
    “I've got to get to work on a sod barn, Laura,” said Pa. “And plow the garden and dig a well and—” Then he looked at Laura an'
    said, “Well, little half-pint, maybe it won't take long.”
    He sat on his heels and Laura sat on hers and they waited. The creek poured and splashed always the same and always changing. Glint of sunshine danced on it. Cool air came up from it and warm air lay on Laura's neck. The bushes held up thousands of little leaves against the sky. They smelled warm and sweet in the sun.
    “Oh, Pa,” Laura said, “do I have to go to school?”
    “You will like school, Laura,” said Pa.
    “I like it better here,” Laura said, mournfully.
    “I know, little half-pint,” said Pa, "but it isn't everybody that gets a chance to learn to read and write and cipher. Your Ma was a school-teacher when we met, and when she came west with me I promised that our girls would have a chance to get book learning.
    That's why we stopped here, so close to a town that has a school. You're almost eight years old now, and Mary going on nine, and it's time you begun. Be thankful you've got the chance, Laura."
    “Yes, Pa,” Laura sighed. Just then another big fish came over the falls. Before Pa could catch it, here came another!
    Pa cut and peeled a forked stick. He took four big fish out of the trap and strung them on the stick. Laura and Pa went back to the house, carrying those flopping fish. Ma's eyes were round when she saw them. Pa cut off their heads and stripped out their insides and showed Laura how to scale fish. He scaled three, and she scaled almost all of one.
    Ma rolled them in meal and fried them in fat, and they ate all those good fish for supper.
    “You always think of something, Charles,”
    said Ma. “Just when I'm wondering where our living is to come from, now it's spring.” Pa could not hunt in the springtime, for then all the rabbits had little rabbits and the birds had little birds in their nests.
    “Wait till I harvest that wheat!” Pa said.
    “Then we'll have salt pork every day. Yes, by gravy, and fresh beef!”
    Every morning after that, before he went to work, Pa brought fish from the trap. He never took more than they needed to eat. The others he lifted out of the trap and let swim away.
    He brought buffalo fish and pickerel, and cat-fish, and shiners, and bullheads with two black horns. He brought some whose names he did not know. Every day there was fish for breakfast and fish for dinner and fish for supper.

SCHOOL
    Monday morning came. As soon as Laura and Mary had washed the
    breakfast dishes, they went up the ladder and put on their Sunday dresses. Mary's was a blue-sprigged calico, and Laura's was red-sprigged.
    Ma braided their hair very tightly and bound the ends with thread. They could not wear their Sunday hair-ribbons because they might lose them. They put on their sunbonnets, freshly washed and ironed.
    Then Ma took them into the bedroom. She knelt down by the box where she kept her best things, and she took out three books.
    They were the books she had studied when ¡
    she was a little girl. One was a speller, and one was a reader, and one was a 'rithmetic.
    She looked solemnly at Mary and Laura, and they were solemn, too.
    “I am giving you these books for your very own, Mary and Laura,” Ma said. “I know you will take care of them and study them faith-fully.”
    “Yes, Ma,” they said.
    She gave Mary the books to carry. She gave Laura the little tin pail with their lunch in it, under a clean cloth.
    “Good-bye,” she said. “Be good girls.”
    Ma and Carrie stood in the doorway, and Jack went with them down the knoll. He was puzzled. They went on across the grass where the