By the Shores of Silver Lake

On a snowy Christmas Eve, the surveyors’ house is “full of secrets” (174) as the girls ready the presents they’ve made for their parents and each other. Pa kills an enormous jackrabbit for Christmas dinner. The family reminisces about previous Christmases, including the year in the Big Woods when Laura received her rag doll and the year Pa was lost in a blizzard. After supper, Pa plays “Jingle Bells” and hymns on his fiddle. Over the music, Mary hears a voice shouting outside the house.

The voice belongs to Mr. Boast, the homesteader who went back east to get married. The Ingalls welcome Robert and Ellie Boast inside the warm house, and Ma and Laura prepare a supper of fried pork, potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. Laura notes that Mrs. Boast, who has “soft brown” hair and blue “long-lashed eyes” (184), looks only a little older than Mary. Although traveling in the winter is inadvisable, the young couple made the trek because they feared that they would lose out on their chance for a homestead if they waited to go west with the crowds in the spring. Ma and Pa worry that they may be too late to