Mary had always been good.  Sometimes she had been so good Laura could hardly bear it. But now she seemed different. Once Laura asked her about it. 

"You used to try all the time to be good," Laura said. "And you always were good. It made me so mad sometimes I wanted to slap you. But now you are good without even trying."

"I know why you wanted to slap me," Mary said. "It was because I was showing off. I wasn't really wanting to be good.  I was showing off to myself, what a good little girl I was and being vain and proud and deserved to be slapped for it… We are all so desperately wicked and inclined to evil as the sparks fly upwards" said Mary using the bible words. "But that doesn't matter."

"What!" cried Laura.

"I mean I don't believe we ought to think so much about ourselves, about whether we are bad or good." Mary explained….  "I don't know how to say what I mean very well. But it isn't so much thinking as, as just knowing. Just being sure of the goodness of God." 

Everyone knows that God is good. But it seemed to Laura then that Mary must be sure of it in a special way.   "You are sure aren't you?" Laura said. 

"I am sure of it now all the time." Mary answered.

from Little Town on the Prairie

scenes below from another prairie in eastern France