Book 4 16. THE WONDERFUL HOUSE Little House On The Prairie By Laura Ingalls Wilder
[Music]
the wonderful house
the creek went down all at once the days
were warm
and early every morning paul went to
work the wheat field with sam and david
the christmas horses
i declare ma said you’re working that
ground to death and killing yourself
but paul said the ground was dry because
there’d not been enough snow
he must plow deep and harrow well and
get the wheat sowed quickly
every day he was working before the sun
came up and he worked till dark
laura waited in the dark till she heard
sam and david splashing into the ford
then she ran into the dugout for the
lantern and she hurried to the stable to
hold it so that park could see to do the
chores
he was too tired to laugh or talk he ate
a supper
and went to bed at last
the wheat was sowed then he sowed oats
and he made the potato patch and the
garden
ma and mary and laura helped plant the
potatoes
and sprinkle little seeds in the garden
rose and they let
carrie think she was helping
the whole world was green with grass now
the yellow green willow leaves were
uncurling
violets and buttercups were thick in the
prairie hollows
and the sorrels clover-like leaves and
lavender blossoms were sour and good to
eat
only the wheat field was bare and brown
one evening par showed laura a faint
green mist
on that brown field the wheat was up
each tiny sprout was so thin you could
hardly see it
but so many of them all together made
that misty green
everyone was happy that night because
the wheat was a good stand
the next day pau drove to town sam and
david could go to town and come back in
one afternoon
there was hardly time to miss paw and
they were not even watching for him when
he came home
laura heard the wagon first and she was
the first one up the path
paul was sitting on the wagon seat his
face was one big
shining of joy and lumber was piled
high in the wagon box behind him he
sang out here’s your new house caroline
but charles ma gasped
laura ran and climbed up over the wheel
up onto that pile of boards
she had never seen such smooth straight
beautiful boards
they had been sawed by machinery
but the wheat’s hardly up yet ma said
that’s all right paul told her they let
me have the lumber
and we’ll pay for it when we sell the
wheat
laura asked him are we going to have a
house made of boards
yes flutter budget said paul we’re going
to have a whole house built of sod
lumber and it’s going to have glass
windows it was really true
next morning mr nelson came to help paw
and they began digging the cellar for
that house
they were going to have that wonderful
house just because the wheat was growing
laura and mary could hardly stay in the
dugout long enough to do their work
but mom made them do it and i won’t have
you giving your work a lick and a
promise
said ma so they washed every breakfast
dish
and put them all away they made their
bed neatly
they brushed the floor with the willow
twig broom
and set the broom in its place then they
could go
they ran down the steps and over the
foot bridge and under the willows up to
the prairie
they went through the prairie grasses
and up to the top of a green knoll
where paul and mr nelson were building
the new house
it was fun to watch them set up the
skeleton house
the timbers stood up slender and gold
and new
and the sky was very blue between them
the hammers made a gay
sound the planes cut long curly shavings
from the sweet smelling boards
laura and mary hung little shavings over
their ears for earrings
they put them around their necks for
necklaces
lara tucked long ones in her hair and
they hung down
in golden curls just the color she had
always wanted her hair to be
up on the skeleton roof paw and mr
nelson
hammered and sawed little blocks of wood
fell
down and laura and mary gathered them in
piles
and built houses of their own they had
never had such a good time
pau and mr nelson covered the skeleton
walls with slanting boards nailed on
they shingled the roof with bottom
shingles
bottom shingles were thin and all the
same
size they were far finer shingles than
even paw could hew with an x
they made an even tight roof with not
one
crack in it then paul laid the floor of
silky smooth
boards that were grooved along the edges
and fitted together perfectly overhead
he lay another floor for the upstairs
and that made the ceiling of the
downstairs
across the downstairs paul put up a
partition
that house was going to have two rooms
one was the bedroom
and the other was only to live in he put
two shining clear glass windows in that
room
one looking toward the sunrise and the
other beside the doorway to the south
in the bedroom walls he set two more
windows
and they were glass windows too laura
had never seen such
wonderful windows they were in halves
there were six panes of glass in each
half and the bottom half
would push up and stay up when a stick
was set under it
opposite the front door paul put a back
door
and outside it he built a tiny room that
was a lean
to because it leaned against the house
it would keep out the north winds in the
winter time
and it was a place where mark could keep
her broom and mop and washtub
now mr nelson was not there and laura
asked questions all the time
paul said the bedroom was for ma and
carrie and him
he said the attic was for mary and laura
to sleep in and to play in
laura wanted so much to see it that he
stopped work on the lean-to
and nailed strips of board up the wall
to make the attic ladder
lara skipped quickly up that ladder till
her head came up through the hole in the
attic floor
the attic was as big as both rooms
downstairs
its floor was smooth boards its slanting
roof
was the underside of the fresh yellow
shingles
there was a little window at each end of
that attic
and those windows were glass windows
at first mary was scared to swing off
the ladder to the attic floor
then she was scared to step down through
the floor hole onto the ladder
laura felt scared too but she pretended
she didn’t
and they soon got used to getting on and
off the ladder
now they thought the house was done but
paw nailed black tar paper all
over the outside of the house walls then
he nailed more boards over that paper
they were long smooth boards one lapping
over the other
all up the sides of the house
then around the windows and the doorways
paul nailed flat frames this house is
tight as a drum he said there was not
one single crack in the roof
or the walls or the floor of that house
to let in
rain or cold winds then paw put in the
doors
and they were bottom doors they were
smooth
and far thinner than slab doors hewed
with an
axe and even thinner panes were set into
them
above and below their middles their
hinges were bottom hinges
and it was marvelous to see them open
and shut
they did not rattle like wooden hinges
or let the door drag like leather hinges
into those doors paw set bottom locks
with keys that went into small
shaped holes and turned and clicked
these locks had white china doorknobs
then one day paul said laura and mary
can you keep a secret oh yes paw
they said promise you won’t tell ma
he asked and they promised he opened the
lean two door
and there stood a shiny black cook stove
paw had brought it from town and hidden
it there
to surprise ma on top
that cook stove had four round holes
and four round lids fitted them each lid
had a grooved hole in it
and there was an iron handle that fitted
into the holes
to lift the lid by in front
there was a long low door there were
slits in this door
and a piece of iron would slide back and
forth to close these slits or open them
that was the draft under it a shelf like
an
oblong pan stuck out that was to catch
ashes and keep them from dropping on the
floor
a lid swung flat over this hollowed-out
shelf
and on the lid were raised iron letters
in
rows mary put her finger on the bottom
row and spelled out
p a t
1 7 7 art
she asked pah what’s that spell paw
it spells pat pau said
laura opened a big door on the side of
the stove
and looked into a big square place with
a shelf across it
paw what’s this for she asked him
it’s the oven part told her he lifted
that marvelous stove and set it in the
living room and put up the stovepipe
piece by piece the stovepipe went up
through the ceiling
and the attic and through a hole he
sawed in the roof
then park climbed onto the roof and he
set a larger tin pipe over the stove
pipe
the tin pipe had a spread out flat
bottom that covered the hole in the roof
not a drop of rain could run down the
stove pipe into the new house
that was a prairie chimney
well it’s done pause said
even to a prairie chimney there was
nothing more that a house could possibly
have
the glass windows made the inside of
that house so light
that you would hardly know you were in a
house it smelled clean
and piney from the yellow new board
walls and floor
the cook stove stood lordly in the
corner by the lemtu door
a touch on the white china doorknob
swung
the bottom door on its bottom hinges
and the doorknob’s little iron tongue
clicked
and held the door shut we’ll move in
tomorrow morning paul said this is the
last night we’ll sleep in a dugout
laura and mary took his hands and they
went down the knoll
the wheat field was a silky shimmery
green
rippling over a curve of the prairie its
sides were straight and its corners
square
and all around it the wild prairie
grasses looked coarser and darker green
lara looked back at that wonderful house
in the sunshine on the knoll its sod
lumber walls and roof were as
golden as a straw stack