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shadow came down from the poles overhead. The stripes of shade and sunshine were all across Laura's hands and her arms and her bare feet. And through the cracks between the logs she could see stripes of prairie. The sweet smell of the prairie mixed with the sweet smell of cut wood.
    Then, as Pa cut away the logs to make the window hole in the west wall, chunks of sunshine came in. When he finished, a big block of sunshine lay on the ground inside the house.
    Around the door hole and the window holes, Pa and Mr. Edwards nailed thin slabs against 64 the cut ends of the logs. And the house was finished, all but the roof. The walls were solid and the house was large, much larger than the tent. It was a nice house.
    Mr. Edwards said he would go home now, but Pa and Ma said he must stay to supper.
    Ma had cooked an especially good supper because they had company.
    There was stewed jack rabbit with white-flour dumplings and plenty of gravy. There was a steaming-hot, thick cornbread flavored with bacon fat. There was molasses to eat on the cornbread, but because this was a company supper they did not sweeten their coffee with molasses. Ma brought out the little paper sack of pale-brown store sugar.
    Mr. Edwards said he surely did appreciate that supper.
    Then Pa brought out his fiddle.
    Mr. Edwards stretched out on the ground, to listen. But first Pa played for Laura and Mary.
    He played their very favorite song, and he sang it. Laura liked it best of all because Pa's voice went down deep, deep, deeper in that song.
    "Oh, I am a Gypsy King!
    I come and go as I please!
    I pull my old nightcap down And take the world at my ease."
    Then his voice went deep, deep down, deeper than the very oldest bullfrog's.
    "Oh, I am a Gypsy KING!"
    They all laughed. Laura could hardly stop laughing.
    “Oh, sing it again, Pa! Sing it again!” she cried, before she remembered that children must be seen and not heard. The n she was quiet.
    Pa went on playing, and everything began to dance. Mr: Edwards rose up on one elbow, then he sat up, then he jumped up and he danced. He danced like a jumping-jack in the moonlight, while Pa's fiddle kept on rollicking 66 and his foot kept tapping the ground, and Laura's hands and Mary's hands were clapping together and their feet were patting, too.
    “You're the fiddlin'est fool that ever I see!”
    Mr. Edwards shouted admiringly to Pa. He didn't stop dancing, Pa didn't stop playing. He played “Money Musk” and “Arkansas Traveler,” “Irish Washerwoman” and the “Devil's Hornpipe.”
    Baby Carrie couldn't sleep in all that music.
    She sat up in Ma's lap, looking at Mr. Edwards with round eyes, and clapping her little hands and laughing.
    Even the firelight danced, and all around its edge the shadows were dancing. Only the new house stood still and quiet in the dark, till the big moon rose and shone on its gray walls and the yellow chips around it.
    Mr. Edwards said he must go. It was a long way back to his camp on the other side of the woods and the creek. He took his gun, and said good night to Laura and Mary and Ma.
    He said a bachelor got mighty lonesome, and he surely had enjoyed this evening of home life.
    “Play, Ingalls!” he said. “Play me down the road!” So while he went down the creek road and out of sight, Pa played, and Pa and Mr.
    Edwards and Laura sang with all their might, 68 "Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man; He washed his face in the frying-pan, He combed his hair with a wagon wheel, And died of the toothache in his heel.
    "Git out of the way for old Dan Tucker!
    He's too late to get his supper!
    Supper's over and the dishes washed, Nothing left but a piece of squash!
    “Old Dan Tucker went to town, Riding a mule, leading a houn'.. .”
    Far over the prairie rang Pa's big voice and Laura's little one, and faintly from the creek bottoms came a last whoop from Mr. Edwards.
    "Git out of the way for old Dan Tucker!
    He's too late to get his supper!"
    When Pa's fiddle stopped, they