Read On The Banks Of Plum Creek for Free Online Page A

“You just play around while I work.”
    But Laura filled her big pail as quickly as Mary filled hers. Mary was cross because she would rather sew or read than pick plums. But Laura hated to sit still; she liked picking plums.
    She liked to shake the trees. You must know exactly how to shake a plum tree. If you shake it too hard, the green plums fall, and that wastes them. If you shake it too softly, you do not get all the ripe plums. In the night they will fall, and some will smash and be wasted.
    Laura learned exactly how to shake a plum tree. She held its scaling-rough bole and shook it, one quick, gentle shake. Every plum swung on its stem and all around her they fell pattering. Then one more jerk while the plums were swinging, and the last ripe ones fell plum-plump! plum-plump! plump! plump!
    There were many kinds of plums. When the red ones were all picked, the yellow ones were ripe. Then the blue ones. The largest of all were the very last. They were the frost plums, that would not ripen until after frost.
    One morning the whole world was delicately silvered. Every blade of grass was silvery and the path had a thin sheen. It was hot like fire under Laura's bare feet, and they left dark footprints in it. The air was cold in her nose and her breath steamed. So did Spot's. When the sun came up, the whole prairie sparkled.
    Millions of tiny, tiny sparks of color blazed on the grasses.
    That day the frost plums were ripe. They were large, purple plums and all over their purple was a silvery thin sheen like frost.
    The sun was not so hot now and the nights were chilly. The prairie was almost the tawny color of the hay-stacks. The smell of the air was different and the sky was not so sharply blue.
    Still the sunshine was warm at noon. There was no rain and no more frosts. It was almost Thanksgiving time, and there was no snow.
    “I don't know what to make of it,” Pa said.
    “I never saw weather like this. Nelson says the old-timers call it grasshopper weather.”
    “Whatever do they mean by that?” Ma asked him.
    Pa shook his head. “You can't prove it by me. 'Grasshopper weather,' was what Nelson said. I couldn't make out what he meant by it.”
    “Likely it's some old Norwegian saying,”
    Ma said.
    Laura liked the sound of the words and when she ran through the crackling prairie grasses and saw the grasshoppers jumping she sang to herself:
    "Grasshopper
    weather!
    Grasshopper weather!"

CATTLE IN THE HAY
    Summer was gone, winter was coming, and now it was time for Pa to make a trip to town. Here in Minnesota, town was so near that Pa would be gone only one day, and Ma was going with him.
    She took Carrie, because Carrie was too little to be left far from Ma. But Mary and Laura were big girls. Mary was going on nine and Laura was going on eight, and they could stay at home and take care of everything while Pa and Ma were gone.
    For going-to-town, Ma made a new dress for Carrie, from the pink calico that Laura had worn when she was little. There was enough of it to make Carrie a little pink sunbonnet.
    Carrie's hair had been in curl-papers all night.
    It hung in long, golden, round curls, and when Ma tied the pink sunbonnet strings under Carrie's chin, Carrie looked like a rose.
    Ma wore her hoopskirts and her best dress, the beautiful challis with little strawberries on it, that she had worn to the sugaring-dance at Grandma's, long ago in the Big Woods.
    “Now be good girls, Laura and Mary,” was the last thing she said. She was on the wagon seat, with Carrie beside her. Their lunch was in the wagon. Pa took up the ox goad.
    "We'll be back before
    sundown," he
    promised. “Hi-oop!” he said to Pete and Bright. The big ox and the little one leaned into their yoke and the wagon started.
    “Good-by, Pa! Good-by, Ma! Good-by, Carrie, good-by!” Laura and Mary called after it.
    Slowly the wagon went away. Pa walked beside the oxen. Ma and Carrie, the wagon, and Pa all grew smaller, till they were gone into the