Little House on the Prairie/Heartwarming

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  • In Little House in the Big Woods, little Laura's rather upset because Mary has Hair of Gold whereas hers is, in her own words, "ugly and brown". Pa then points out that he has brown hair, too, which makes her much happier with her own.
  • In These Happy Golden Years, Almanzo making it clear that he will continue to take Laura home every Friday and then back to her school on Sunday even if he has nothing to gain from it himself. To elaborate: the previous weekend, Laura told him up-front that she was only going with him in order to get home, so he shouldn't feel any obligation to come. On Friday afternoon, the temperature is forty below and dropping and Laura is absolutely certain there's no chance at all he's going to come. He does.
    • On the same note, once Laura's teaching job is over and she's back at home, she discovers that her school friends are all going sleighing and clearly having a wonderful time. Realizing that her extended absence has caused her to be left out, she feels quite depressed - until Almanzo shows up at her door asking if she'd like to go sleighing.
  • A subtle one in By the Shores of Silver Lake. At the beginning of the book the Ingallses move west to Dakota Territory, even though Ma doesn't want to, because Pa (as ever) wants a homestead and has a job offer at the railroad camp in the meantime. Once they're there, Laura wants to go further west, and is jealous of her "wild" cousin Lena whose family is going to move on. Pa obviously feels the same way but tells her he promised her mother they would settle down somewhere where the girls could go to school. One night Laura takes Carrie out to slide on the frozen lake, and by following the reflection made on the ice by the moon, they end up going all the way across. They see a wolf and run back to the house, where Pa is surprised to hear that they got that far away in the first place.

"We followed the moonpath," Laura told him. Pa looked at her strangely. "You would!" he said.

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