Winoka, Dakota Territory–Sources indicates that newly minted Big City Man Charles Ingalls has eagerly become a benefactor to a local stray boy.
Over breakfast on a recent morning, Charles talked his new young friend Albert, who he has known for a paltry amount of time, into attending school for a quarter a week. The street smart lad readily agreed to the deal.
“This is going to be at least a dollar a month,” Albert excitedly shares. “I can easily turn this into a lot more with some careful bets.”
Although the Ingalls family has lived in the city for only a short while, the change in Charles Ingalls is remarkable, close acquaintances note.
“I never knew Charles Ingalls to pay anyone for schooling before,” close friend Jonathan Garvey notes. “Boy, that Charles, he really keeps you on your toes, don’t he?”
Nels Oleson acknowledged that Charles’ willingness to pay a quarter a week for a boy he hardly knows to go to school doesn’t align with the Charles Ingalls he knew in Walnut Grove.
“Why, this is a surprise,” Nels comments. “Don’t get me wrong, helping the boy is nice and all. But is this really the same man that just weeks ago was unable to pay his bill at the Mercantile? And I mean chronically unable to pay it?”
At press time, Charles was disappointed to learn that Albert had already started betting wit the money while his daughters fondly remember the time that this man who is now so invested in the education of a relative stranger uprooted them to the Kansas prairie where there was no school at all.
