“Pa didn’t say I couldn’t smell it,” said Laura.
She stood cl
ose to the golden stack and sniffed long, deep sniffs. The straw was warmed by the sun. It smelled better than wheat kernels taste when you chew them. Laura burrowed her face in it, shutting her eyes and smelling deeper and deeper.
“Mmm!” she said.
Mary came and smelled it and said, “Mmm!”
Laura looked up the glistening, prickly, golden stack. She had never seen the sky so blue as it was above that gold. She could not stay on the ground. She had to be high up in that blue sky.
“Laura!” Mary cried. “Pa said we mustn’t!”
Laura was climbing. “He did not, either!” she contradicted. “He did not say we must not climb up it. He said we must not slide down it. I’m only climbing.”
“You come right straight down from there,” said Mary.
Laura was on top of the stack. She looked down at Mary and said, like a very good little girl, “I am not going to slide down. Pa said not to.”
Nothing but the blue sky was higher than she was. The wind was blowing. The green prairie was wide and far. Laura spread her arms and jumped, and the straw bounded her high.
“I’m flying! I’m flying!” she sang. Mary climbed up, and Mary began to fly, too.
They bounced until they could bounce no higher. Then they flopped flat on the sweet warm straw. Bulges of straw rose up on both sides of Laura. She rolled onto a bulge and it sank, but another rose up. She rolled onto that bulge, and then she was rolling faster and faster; she could not stop.
“Laura!” Mary screamed. “Pa said—” But Laura was rolling. Over, over, over, right down that straw-stack she rolled and thumped in straw on the ground.
She jumped up and climbed that strawstack again as fast as she could. She flopped and began to roll again. “Come on, Mary!” she shouted. “Pa didn’t say we can’t roll!”
Mary stayed on top of the stack and argued. “I know Pa didn’t say we can’t roll, but—”
“Well, then!” Laura rolled down again. “Come on!” she called up. “It’s lots of fun!”
“Well, but I—” said Mary. Then she came rolling down.
It was great fun. It was more fun than sliding. They climbed and rolled and climbed and rolled, laughing harder all the time. More and more straw rolled down with them. They waded in it and rolled each other in it and climbed and rolled down again, till there was hardly anything left to climb.
Then they brushed every bit of straw off their dresses, they picked every bit out of their hair, and they went quietly into the dugout.
When Pa came from the hay-field that night, Mary was busily setting the table for supper. Laura was behind the door, busy with the box of paper dolls.
“Laura,” Pa said, dreadfully, “come here.”
Slowly Laura went out from behind the door.
“Come here,” said Pa, “right over here by Mary.”
He sat down and he stood them before him, side by side. But it was Laura he looked at.
He said, sternly, “You girls have been sliding down the straw-stack again.”
“No, Pa,” said Laura.
“Mary!” said Pa. “Did you slide down the straw-stack?”
“N-no, Pa,” Mary said.
“Laura!” Pa’s voice was terrible. “Tell me again, DID Y OU SLIDE DOWN THE STRAWSTACK?”