Laura, her mom and her sister liked to do things together. They did things like make cheese and do chores. During the harvest, their cousin Charley got in big trouble. He lied when he screamed that a snake was attacking him. So Pa and Charley's dad stopped everything they were doing to help him. But then they found out he was lying. And he kept doing it over and over - lying about needing help. Finally he actually did need help and they didn't want to help him until they actually saw that he needed help from getting the yellow jackets' from stinging him.
The Wonderful Machine was called a thresher. The thresher separated the grain from the stalks. It was a great invention because it did it a lot faster than Pa could. The thresher people would get wheat for helping them get the wheat off the stalks much more faster so they could make more food.
Pa saw a baby deer in the wood and he didn't shoot it because it was too small. Pa said he'd never shoot a baby deer to his daughter named Laura.