The Camp-Out 4/5

The next morning Willie and Harriet are covered in some homemade paste that Caroline applies. Laura and Mary watch as the Olesons scratch themselves. Thank God for TV – that is not my idea of entertainment. Harriet tells Willie to stop scratching, causing Laura to smirk. Mrs. Oelson wonders aloud why she and her son are the only ones to be affected. Well, if you let Willie share his treasure trove then everyone would be complaining. Happy now, Harriet? Mary doesn’t offer my answer and instead uses the semi-rhetorical question as an opportunity to exit before she shares her knowledge about the poison ivy.

Nels saunters over and asks his wife if there is anything he can do to help her. She tells her husband not to worry and to go fishing as if nothing were wrong. Strange, but there is no air of a guilt trip when Harriet says this. Nels notices this too, so he and Charles scamper off before Harriet has another change of heart.

Later along the riverbank, we see Laura and Mary running towards more leaves. Nellie yells for the girls to wait up so she can “search” along with them. Mary suggests that they split up to maximize their leaf count. Nellie decides to continue to tag along with Laura. It’s probably for the best – we don’t want Nellie to get eaten by a panda bear drinking from the Danube now, do we?

Jack leads the way down a narrow path along the river. Laura gingerly walks towards a leaf but Nellie swoops in and snatches it. Farther down the path, Nellie spots some leaves right by the river’s edge. Laura calls over to Nellie, telling her to be careful. Nellie scoffs at this. A moment later she screams as she lowers herself, er, “falls” into the water. Laura runs over to grab the girl, but the bush that Nellie was holding onto uproots and pulls both of the girls into the rapids. Of course. Jack barks in disapproval.

Back at camp, Charles swoops in to steal a sandwich from a stack that Caroline had prepared. He asks how the leaf hunters are doing and his wife reports that Mary came back but Laura and Nellie were still out and about. Charles checks in with Mary to see her leaf collection. Over at the Oleson side of the camp, Harriet tells Nels that lunch is almost ready so he should call for Nellie. He looks around a bit before asking Mary if she has seen his daughter. Mary says she hasn’t, but she found Jack nearby so the girls must be around somewhere. Charles and Nels decide to go look for the girls.

Meanwhile downstream, Laura and Nellie cling to the bush as the rapids carry them. “We’ll have to wait until it gets shallow,” Laura says. Nelly whines at an ear-piercing frequency about not being able to swim. After navigating past a fallen tree trunk, we enter into an homage to Deliverance. If anyone tells Nellie that she has a purty mouth, I am so done with this project. Despite the bush’s incredibly weak roots, the girls manage to hang on and not slam into any rocks…so far…