It's Wednesday.

Pa reached down and pulled up a slab. He laid it across the ends of the sapling rafters. It’s edge stuck out beyond the wall. Then Pa put some nails in his mouth and took his hammer out of his belt, and he began to nail the slab to the rafters. Mr. Edwards had lent him the nails. They had met in the woods, where they were both chopping down trees, and Mr. Edwards had insisted that Pa borrow nails for the roof. Pa said to Ma that that was what he called a good neighbor when he told Ma about it. Ma said yes but she didn’t like to be beholden, not even to the best of neighbors. Pa replied nor he and he had never been beholden to any man yet, and he never would be, but neighborliness was another matter, and he would pay him back every nail as soon as he could make the trip to Independence. Now Pa carefully took the nails one by one from his mouth, and with ringing blows of the hammer he drove them into the slab. It was much quicker than drilling holes and whittling pegs and driving them into the holes. But every now and then a nail sprang away from tough oak when the hammer hit it, and if Pa was not holding it firmly, it went sailing through the air. Then Mary and Laura watched it fall and they searched in the grass till they found it. Sometimes it was bent. Then Pa carefully pounded it straight again. It would never do to lose or waste a nail. When Pa had nailed down two slabs, he got up on them. He laid and nailed more slabs, all the way up to the top of the rafters. The edge of each slab lapped over the edge of the slab below it. Then he began again on the other side of the house, and he laid the roof all the way up from that side.