It's Saturday.
Pa said to Ma that it was no use lazing here while there was work to be done and the sooner he got the fireplace done, the sooner she could do her cooking inside, out of the wind. He hauled saplings from the woods, and he cut and notched them and laid them up like the walls of the house, on top of the stone chimney. As he laid them, he plastered them well with mud. And that finished the chimney. Then he went into the house, and with his ax and saw he cut the logs that had made the fourth wall at the bottom of the chimney. And there was the fireplace. It was large enough for Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie to sit in. Its bottom was the ground that Pa had cleared of grass, and its front was the space where Pa had cut away the logs. Across the top of that space was the log that Pa had plastered all over with mud. On each side Pa pegged a thick slab of green oak against the cut ends of logs. Then by the upper corners of the fireplace he pegged chunks of oak to the wall, and on these he laid an oak slab and pegged it firmly. That was the mantel-shelf. As soon as it was done, Ma set in the middle of the mantel-shelf the little China woman she had bought from the Big Woods. The little china woman had come all the way and had not been broken. She stood on the mantel-shelf with her little china shoes and her wide china skirts and her tight china bodice, and her pink cheeks and blue eyes and golden hair all made of china. Then Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura stood and admired that fireplace. Only Carrie did not care about it. She pointed at the little china woman and yelled when Mary and Laura told her that no one but Ma could touch it. Pa told Ma that she would have to be careful with her fire, and he didn’t want sparks going up the chimney to set the roof on fire, and that cloth would burn, easy, and he would split out some clapboards as soon as he could, and made a roof she wouldn’t have to worry about.
