Caroline: Little House, Revisited Quotes
"With each note, the white thread licked a warm line across her finger."
"Gustafson’s agreed to pay one thousand twelve dollars and fifty cents for our half of this quarter section."
"Such foolish greed; she had let herself imagine that money as though it were sitting in her lap."
"The arithmetic alone spoke for itself: twice the acreage, none of the debt."
"Caroline remembered the thrill, after three years of married life spent under others’ roofs, of buying this place."
"To move westward was nothing new, but always, she had traveled from the sanctuary of one family to another."
"How might it feel to do the same on land that bore no mark of another family?"
"Mary and little Laura could repeat his reveries of the mighty jackrabbits and treeless acreage."
"Better to travel now. It will only be harder if we wait."
"Her eyes roved over the place where her china shepherdess stood gazing down from the mantel."
"Staying would only make for a year shadowed with lasts—one vast goodbye shattered over innumerable small moments."
"Caroline’s eyes roved over the place where her china shepherdess stood gazing down from the mantel."
"The West was a song Charles wanted a hand in composing."
"The wagon had a new odor with all of them sealed inside it."
"A week, Caroline soon concluded, is too cumbersome a thing to count—or to be counted on."
"Days spent on the road were best measured in miles."
"Time, Caroline decided, could be trusted to measure the distance between meals, and nothing else."
"Eighteen one day, just over twenty the next. Now and then a good long stretch of twenty-four, twenty-five miles. On the road a week became plain arithmetic."
"Each day formed the same narrow circle; six of them stacked together earned a Sunday."
"Three things governed their moods: the quality of the road, the disposition of the weather, and the supply of fuel and water."
"In the open, each new cookfire announced itself a stranger, and it was a rare one that did not require cajoling or pampering."
"Her triumphs were lackluster; nothing, down to the coffee and tea, tasted quite like her own cooking."
"Caroline wrote letters in her mind. To Henry and Polly she described the lay of the land, its prospects for crops and husbandry."
"For Ma and Papa Frederick she saved the news of their smaller travails."
"The truest of them went to Eliza. To Eliza she could confess how keenly she felt the want of walls and doors."
"We are waiting by the river, We are watching on the shore, Only waiting for the boatman, Soon he’ll come to bear us o’er."
"There is likely a creek nearby. I shouldn’t wonder if the rain has flooded it."
"Such a big girl, yet still small enough to take refuge in that same nest of red worsted."
"Their comfort spiraled one into the other, as it always had."
"How much of what they loved in her was real, and how much was fashioned from what they envisioned her to be?"
"Their faces cried out for a refuge, steady and serene, and that is what she had become, lifted from her own doubts by the sheer force of their need."
"Charles halted the horses and looked back for her approval. His face pained her."
"It was a kind of sorcery: What her girls believed of her, they made real."
"Their little house in the Big Woods had rarely felt cramped."
"He did not know how else to show his burgeoning love for Kansas, so he wanted to do with her what he could not do with the land."
"The music was the only part of him that could not be constricted by walls and fences and trees."
"Life on the opposing shore would be measurably different."
"With no one else to depend on, they had failed each other."
"Alert, yes, and cautious, too, but though she kept herself and Laura held safely back, her mind seemed to lean forward, curiously drawn toward the riddle of what that creature might be."
"The animal’s eyes seemed to scrape the ground. Please, those eyes said."
"Somewhere out on the open prairie he must have scented her, standing alone in the tall grass outside the campsite, and he had followed."
"Without woods or walls to partition the space around her, the sense of that word—alone—blurred."
"All she need do to find them was stand in the wagon box and watch for the dimpling of the grass."
"Her knuckles stung with cold as she plunged the fabric in and out of the water."
"Caroline stood back thoughtfully taking in their colors and shapes: Charles in brown and green, herself and Mary in shades of blue, and Laura’s little sprigged calico in just the bold shade of red Caroline longed to wear."
"Yet Caroline felt a loosening in herself as the bow stroked the strings."
"The game he carried did nothing to contradict his flourishes of excitement."
"Caroline’s viscera lurched. The dead rabbit loomed too large, a glory of waste and feast."
"The whole day stretched before her, with no wagon wheels cutting through it."
"The moonlight glinted on the wolves’ shaggy coats and made their eyes glow deep and green-gold."
"Everything went where she wanted it—the broom in one corner, the churn in the other."
"She had seen it kindling inside him these last days, as they drove across the prairie."
"Her mind strayed to her rocker, and she smiled wistfully."
"The world seemed to bend for Charles, Caroline thought as she watched him crank the windlass."
"The tips of her fingers began to tingle. Her palms burned where the grain of the windlass handle had bitten into the skin."
"Her nightdress had hitched itself halfway over her belly. Only another dream."
"The child shifted, as if it, too, were discomfited by such thoughts."
"No more, she promised it. No more. A promise she could not hope to keep."
"The smell of Mrs. Scott’s good supper was still in the air when Caroline woke."
"Caroline’s eyebrow arched. That was a sacrifice, coming from Mary."
"Caroline salivated anew at the wealth of things she could do with them."
"The sensation made her thankful for her corset’s firm embrace."
"Caroline considered whether to close her eyes again."
"She watched him line the dishpan with a towel, then mix hot and cold water and dip his elbow in to test it."
"Be thankful for what is given. No matter if it is not enough, be thankful."
"Gratitude was too often the feeblest of pleasures; gratitude was nothing like what she had been waiting to pass between herself and her daughter."
"I'm sure she's grown since I saw her last. Heavier than a pail of blackberries."
"I would guess you're almost as heavy as a bushel of cotton."
"It sounded, at first, like the wind. High and long and wavering."
"Once I get into the creek, it won't matter if you've set me ablaze, coat and all."
"I have left undone those things which we ought to have done."
"Everything that had frightened her that day had risen out of her own dread of what they might do, not from anything they had actually done."
"Once the crops had put down roots and began reaching up out of the ground, there would be no mistaking to whom this quarter section belonged."
"Every few minutes she glanced up from plucking the prairie chicken Mr. Edwards had brought the day before to glance down the creek road."
"Her mind wanted to know more. She went to the window and listened again."
"It was music, at least. The melody was unlike any song she had ever sung, but Caroline could find the pattern in it."
"Caroline felt a swelling within herself. It pressed against every edge of her body, so light she was utterly weightless. Relief."
"She ran a toe lightly, so lightly, along the sole of his foot."
"The radiant vista before her did not simply burn; it consumed."
"Her heart was full and heavy behind her ribs, like a breast in need of suckling."
"The pain was quick and deep and entirely without malice."
"Her heart seemed to spread, to peel itself open so that it could span the full breadth of the memories."
"Home is where the heart is. That was what the samplers said, spelled out in small, neatly crossed threads."