prompt:
Chapter: WHEN spring came, after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the
nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter
was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch
in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only--spring
itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it
everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in
the warm, high wind--rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and
playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If
I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known
that it was spring.

Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighbors burned
off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that the fresh
growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Those light,
swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the same kindling
that was in the air.

The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbors had
helped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of their old
cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairly equipped to
begin their struggle with the soil. They had four comfortable rooms to
live in, a new windmill,--bought on credit,--a chicken-house and poultry.
Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow, and was to
give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested their first crop.

When I rode up to the Shimerdas' one bright windy afternoon in April,
Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave reading lessons;
Antonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony and went into the
kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as she
worked. By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a great many
questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She seemed to think
that my elders withheld helpful information, and that from me she might
get valuable secrets. On this occasion she asked me very craftily when
grandfather expected to begin planting corn. I told her, adding that he
thought we should have a dry spring and that the corn would not be held
back by too much rain, as it had been last year.

She gave me a shrewd glance. "He not Jesus," she blustered; "he not know
about the wet and the dry."

I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hour when
Ambrosch and Antonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda
at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep
warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have
seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the
neighbors were there building the new house they saw her do this, and the
story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their feather beds.

When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw with her
team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had come to us a
child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although her fifteenth
birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as she brought her
horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the boots her father had
so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap. Her
outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, over the boot-tops. She
kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as
brown as a sailor's. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like
the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draft-horse neck among
the peasant women in all old countries.

She greeted me gayly, and began at once to tell me how much ploughing she
had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter, breaking
sod with the oxen.

"Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don't want that Jake get
more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn this fall."

While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drank
again, Antonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on her
hand. "You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope
your grandpa ain't lose no stacks?"

"No, we did n't. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants to
know if you can't go to the term of school that begins next week over at
the sod schoolhouse. She says there's a good teacher, and you'd learn a
lot."

Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were
stiff. "I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother
can't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work
as much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make this land
one good farm."

She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her,
feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, I
wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in her
silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her face
from me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the dark
prairie.

I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while she
unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambrosch had
come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at the tank.

Antonia took my hand. "Sometime you will tell me all those nice things you
learn at the school, won't you, Jimmy?" she asked with a sudden rush of
feeling in her voice. "My father, he went much to school. He know a great
deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. He play horn
and violin, and he read so many books that the priests in Bohemie come to
talk to him. You won't forget my father, Jim?"

"No," I said, "I will never forget him."

Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antonia had
washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the
kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda
ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush
we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee with the cake that had
been kept warm in the feathers. Antonia and Ambrosch were talking in
Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more ploughing that day.
Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while she gobbled her food.

              [Illustration: Antonia ploughing in the field]

Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: "You take them ox to-morrow
and try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart."

His sister laughed. "Don't be mad. I know it's awful hard work for break
sod. I milk the cow for you to-morrow, if you want."

Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. "That cow not give so much milk like
what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him
back the cow."

"He does n't talk about the fifteen dollars," I exclaimed indignantly. "He
does n't find fault with people."

"He say I break his saw when we build, and I never," grumbled Ambrosch.

I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I began
to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable to me.
Antonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table
and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother
had said, "Heavy field work'll spoil that girl. She'll lose all her nice
ways and get rough ones." She had lost them already.

After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight. Since
winter I had seen very little of Antonia. She was out in the fields from
sun-up until sun-down. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing,
she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then gripped her
plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow, making
me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. On Sundays she
helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased
with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled and said, "She
will help some fellow get ahead in the world."

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much
she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew, too,
that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and that
the farmhands around the country joked in a nasty way about it. Whenever I
saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her
dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to
think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet
managed to say so much when he exclaimed, "My An-tonia!"

AFTER I began to go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We
were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback
and brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them very interesting,
but I somehow felt that by making comrades of them I was getting even with
Antonia for her indifference. Since the father's death, Ambrosch was more
than ever the head of the house and he seemed to direct the feelings as
well as the fortunes of his women-folk. Antonia often quoted his opinions
to me, and she let me see that she admired him, while she thought of me
only as a little boy. Before the spring was over, there was a distinct
coldness between us and the Shimerdas. It came about in this way.

One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar which
Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned. It was a beautiful
blue morning. The buffalo-peas were blooming in pink and purple masses
along the roadside, and the larks, perched on last year's dried sunflower
stalks, were singing straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and
their yellow breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet
gusts. We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.

We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden,
off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill
tower, oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked
for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged to
grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.

"Now, don't you say you have n't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you
have, and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will."

Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward the
stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days. Presently he
returned, carrying a collar that had been badly used--trampled in the dirt
and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking out of it.

"This what you want?" he asked surlily.

Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under the rough
stubble on his face. "That ain't the piece of harness I loaned you,
Ambrosch; or if it is, you've used it shameful. I ain't a-going to carry
such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden."

Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. "All right," he said coolly,
took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill. Jake caught him by the
belt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch's feet had scarcely
touched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at Jake's
stomach. Fortunately Jake was in such a position that he could dodge it.
This was not the sort of thing country boys did when they played at
fisticuffs, and Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on the head--it
sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped over,
stunned.

We heard squeals, and looking up saw Antonia and her mother coming on the
run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged through the
muddy water, without even lifting their skirts. They came on, screaming
and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch had come to his senses and was
sputtering with nose-bleed. Jake sprang into his saddle. "Let's get out of
this, Jim," he called.

Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she were
going to pull down lightning. "Law, law!" she shrieked after us. "Law for
knock my Ambrosch down!"

"I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden," Antonia panted. "No
friends any more!"

Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second. "Well, you're a damned
ungrateful lot, the whole pack of you," he shouted back. "I guess the
Burdens can get along without you. You've been a sight of trouble to them,
anyhow!"

We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiled for
us. I had n't a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper and
trembling all over. It made him sick to get so angry. "They ain't the
same, Jimmy," he kept saying in a hurt tone. "These foreigners ain't the
same. You can't trust 'em to be fair. It's dirty to kick a feller. You
heard how the women turned on you--and after all we went through on account
of 'em last winter! They ain't to be trusted. I don't want to see you get
too thick with any of 'em."

"I'll never be friends with them again, Jake," I declared hotly. "I
believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath."

Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye. He advised Jake to
ride to town to-morrow, go to a justice of the peace, tell him he had
knocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerda was
inclined to make trouble--her son was still under age--she would be
forestalled. Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market
the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour after Jake had
started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly driving by, looking
neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out of sight down the Black
Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had rather expected she would
follow the matter up.

Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given him for
that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig in town
that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake had to sell
his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdas great
satisfaction, apparently. For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and I met
Antonia on her way to the post-office, or going along the road with her
work-team, she would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing
voice:--

"Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the slap!"

Otto pretended not to be surprised at Antonia's behavior. He only lifted
his brows and said, "You can't tell me anything new about a Czech; I'm an
Austrian."

Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our feud with the
Shimerdas. Ambrosch and Antonia always greeted him respectfully, and he
asked them about their affairs and gave them advice as usual. He thought
the future looked hopeful for them. Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; he
soon realized that his oxen were too heavy for any work except breaking
sod, and he succeeded in selling them to a newly arrived German. With the
money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather selected for
him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he could never
teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that had ever got
through poor Marek's thick head was that all exertion was meritorious. He
always bore down on the handles of the cultivator and drove the blades so
deep into the earth that the horses were soon exhausted.

In June Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy's for a week, and took Marek
with him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator;
she and Antonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores at night.
While the two women were running the place alone, one of the new horses
got colic and gave them a terrible fright.

Antonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was well
before she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans was swollen
about the middle and stood with its head hanging. She mounted another
horse, without waiting to saddle him, and hammered on our door just as we
were going to bed. Grandfather answered her knock. He did not send one of
his men, but rode back with her himself, taking a syringe and an old piece
of carpet he kept for hot applications when our horses were sick. He found
Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing
her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the
poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan
visibly diminish in girth.

"If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden," Antonia exclaimed, "I never stay here
till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond before morning."

When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy's, we learned that he had given
Marek's wages to the priest at Black Hawk, for masses for their father's
soul. Grandmother thought Antonia needed shoes more than Mr. Shimerda
needed prayers, but grandfather said tolerantly, "If he can spare six
dollars, pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he professes."

It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the Shimerdas.
One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on so well, he
thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July. He would
need more men, and if it were agreeable to every one he would engage
Ambrosch for the reaping and thrashing, as the Shimerdas had no small
grain of their own.

"I think, Emmaline," he concluded, "I will ask Antonia to come over and
help you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something, and it will
be a good time to end misunderstandings. I may as well ride over this
morning and make arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim?" His tone
told me that he had already decided for me.

After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming, she
ran from her door down into the draw behind the stable, as if she did not
want to meet us. Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied his horse,
and we followed her.

Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently been
grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to the animal, pulled
up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her, she was trying to hide the
cow in an old cave in the bank. As the hole was narrow and dark, the cow
held back, and the old woman was slapping and pushing at her hind
quarters, trying to spank her into the draw-side.

Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will find Ambrosch?
Which field?"

"He with the sod corn." She pointed toward the north, still standing in
front of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it.

"His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter," said grandfather
encouragingly. "And where is Antonia?"

"She go with." Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously
in the dust.

"Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me cut
my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good-morning. By the
way, Mrs. Shimerda," he said as he turned up the path, "I think we may as
well call it square about the cow."

She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did not
understand, grandfather turned back. "You need not pay me anything more;
no more money. The cow is yours."

"Pay no more, keep cow?" she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow eyes
snapping at us in the sunlight.

"Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow." He nodded.

Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and crouching down beside
grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had ever been
so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that
seemed to bring the Old World very close.

We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: "I expect she thought we had
come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she would n't have
scratched a little if we'd laid hold of that lariat rope!"

Our neighbors seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs.
Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted. She
presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, "Now you not come
any more for knock my Ambrosch down?"

Jake laughed sheepishly. "I don't want to have no trouble with Ambrosch.
If he'll let me alone, I'll let him alone."

"If he slap you, we ain't got no pig for pay the fine," she said
insinuatingly.

Jake was not at all disconcerted. "Have the last word, mam," he said
cheerfully. "It's a lady's privilege."

JULY came on with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains
of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if
we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a
faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered
stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri
to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a
thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that
were ripening and fertilizing each other day by day. The cornfields were
far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took
a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's to foresee that they would
enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields,
or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields; that their yield would be one
of the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie
all the activities of men, in peace or war.

The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,
secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little to
fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields
that they did not notice the heat,--though I was kept busy carrying water
for them,--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to do in the kitchen
that they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another.
Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Antonia went with me
up to the garden to get early vegetables for dinner. Grandmother made her
wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached the garden she threw it on the
grass and let her hair fly in the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over
the pea-vines, beads of perspiration used to gather on her upper lip like
a little mustache.

"Oh, better I like to work out of doors than in a house!" she used to sing
joyfully. "I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I
like to be like a man." She would toss her head and ask me to feel the
muscles swell in her brown arm.

We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsive that
one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.
Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antonia worked for
us.

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The
harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the
house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat
lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame
of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a
beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut
grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when
the dishes were washed Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of
the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic,
like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags
across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a
moment. Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the
west was luminous and clear: in the lightning-flashes it looked like deep
blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the
sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid sea-coast
city, doomed to destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our
upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out
into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we
could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the
farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we would
get wet out there.

"In a minute we come," Antonia called back to her. "I like your
grandmother, and all things here," she sighed. "I wish my papa live to see
this summer. I wish no winter ever come again."

"It will be summer a long while yet," I reassured her. "Why are n't you
always nice like this, Tony?"

"How nice?"

"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be
like Ambrosch?"

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I
live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But
they will be hard for us."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Parts XVII - XIX Part XVII Spring arrives, and the Shimerdas have built themselves  a new log cabin. They have bought a cow from the Burdens, and paid for half of it. Mrs. Shimerda has taken to asking Jim questions about what his family plans to do with their crops, acting like she doesn't trust his family to be honest with her. Antonia has been put to work in the fields, and she is beginning to grow strong like a man. She competes with Jake and hopes to accomplish as much as Jake in a day. She has also given up on schooling, telling Jim that she is needed on the farm. But she seems sad about this sacrifice, and she cries after telling Jim about this and asks him to talk to her about what he has learned. She mentions her father again, telling Jim that he was well educated and a skilled musician. Jim has dinner with the Shimerdas, and Mrs. Shimerda complains about the cow she has bought. Ambrosch mentions that he had been accused of breaking a saw. Jim says that he knew Ambrosch broke it, and that he was denying it. Jim also seems to get annoyed at the way that Antonia eats like a man, too. He develops the habit of stopping to talk to her as she plows in the field, but she tends to only stop for a moment or two before returning to work. Part XVIII Soon there is a disagreement between the Shimerdas and the Burdens. Jake and Jim ask Ambrosch to return a harness that he has borrowed, and he tries to return the wrong one. Jake and Ambrosch get into a fight, and Antonia and Mrs. Shimerda come running to defend Ambrosch. Jake and Jim run back to the Burdens and tell Mr. Burden what happened. He tells Jake to take the horse into town as soon as possible, report the fight to the authorities, and pay the fine for starting the fight. As a convenience, Mr. Burden also asks him to bring a pig with him that they have been planning to sell. Mrs. Shimerda takes Ambrosch to town the next day to file the complaint against Jake and to try to get him arrested. Since he has already paid his fine, no additional trouble can be made for him. But they find out about the pig that he sold, and they seem to think that they have forced him to sell the pig to pay the fine. Antonia begins taunting them when they encounter her on the road. Mr. Burden manages to remain neutral, and he continues to help the Shimerdas. He helps Ambrosch buy a team of horses, and he helps the Shimerdas with a sick horse. He also brings about an end to the "feud." He decides to hire Ambrosch to help them harvest their wheat, and to hire Antonia to help in the kitchen. He takes Jim over to the Shimerdas, and they find Mrs. Shimerda trying to hide the cow in a small cave. Mr. Burden tells Mrs. Shimerda that she doesn't have to pay him the other half of the money that she owes him for the cow, and she rejoices. Later, he speculates to Jim that Mrs. Shimerda might have thought that he was coming to take back the cow. Part XIX Things seem to be working well with the Shimerdas, and Antonia becomes very popular at the Burdens because of her liveliness. She and Jim are getting along well, and Jim asks why she can't always be herself instead of trying to be like Ambrosch. At the Burden house, she says, things are easy. But they aren't as easy for the Shimerdas.


prompt:
Chapter: I HAD been living with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the
heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to be
going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to "that good woman,
the Widow Steavens," and her bachelor brother, and we bought Preacher
White's house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was the first town
house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark which told country
people their long ride was over.

We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather had
fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said he
would not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; that he
was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called the
"wild West." Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure, decided
to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so handicapped by
illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey
to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian
people, where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted
to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was waiting for him in
Colorado.

Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, put down the
carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards for grandmother's
kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last they went, without
warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us through sun and storm,
had given us things that cannot be bought in any market in the world. With
me they had been like older brothers; had restrained their speech and
manners out of care for me, and given me so much good comradeship. Now
they got on the west-bound train one morning, in their Sunday clothes,
with their oilcloth valises--and I never saw them again. Months afterward
we got a card from Otto, saying that Jake had been down with mountain
fever, but now they were both working in the Yankee Girl mine, and were
doing well. I wrote to them at that address, but my letter was returned to
me, "unclaimed." After that we never heard from them.

Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean,
well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards
about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little trees growing
along the wooden sidewalks. In the center of the town there were two rows
of new brick "store" buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the courthouse, and
four white churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs, two
miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the lost
freedom of the farming country.

We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt like town
people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother
was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and I was quite
another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring term of school was
over I could fight, play "keeps," tease the little girls, and use
forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from
utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbor,
kept an eye on me, and if my behavior went beyond certain bounds I was not
permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly children.

We saw more of our country neighbors now than when we lived on the farm.
Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them. We had a big barn
where the farmers could put up their teams, and their women-folk more
often accompanied them, now that they could stay with us for dinner, and
rest and set their bonnets right before they went shopping. The more our
house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I
came home from school at noon, to see a farm wagon standing in the back
yard, and I was always ready to run downtown to get beefsteak or baker's
bread for unexpected company. All through that first spring and summer I
kept hoping that Ambrosch would bring Antonia and Yulka to see our new
house. I wanted to show them our red plush furniture, and the
trumpet-blowing cherubs the German paper-hanger had put on our parlor
ceiling.

When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone, and though he put his
horses in our barn, he would never stay for dinner, or tell us anything
about his mother and sisters. If we ran out and questioned him as he was
slipping through the yard, he would merely work his shoulders about in his
coat and say, "They all right, I guess."

Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our farm, grew as fond of Antonia as we
had been, and always brought us news of her. All through the wheat season,
she told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from
farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the thrashers. The farmers
liked her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand
than Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn for the neighbors until
Christmas, as she had done the year before; but grandmother saved her from
this by getting her a place to work with our neighbors, the Harlings.

GRANDMOTHER often said that if she had to live in town, she thanked God
she lived next the Harlings. They had been farming people, like ourselves,
and their place was like a little farm, with a big barn and a garden, and
an orchard and grazing lots,--even a windmill. The Harlings were
Norwegians, and Mrs. Harling had lived in Christiania until she was ten
years old. Her husband was born in Minnesota. He was a grain merchant and
cattle buyer, and was generally considered the most enterprising business
man in our county. He controlled a line of grain elevators in the little
towns along the railroad to the west of us, and was away from home a great
deal. In his absence his wife was the head of the household.

Mrs. Harling was short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house.
Every inch of her was charged with an energy that made itself felt the
moment she entered a room. Her face was rosy and solid, with bright,
twinkling eyes and a stubborn little chin. She was quick to anger, quick
to laughter, and jolly from the depths of her soul. How well I remember
her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her
eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps
shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever
she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her
enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all
the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary,
at the Harlings'. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, and
house-cleaning was like a revolution. When Mrs. Harling made garden that
spring, we could feel the stir of her undertaking through the willow hedge
that separated our place from hers.

Three of the Harling children were near me in age. Charley, the only
son,--they had lost an older boy,--was sixteen; Julia, who was known as the
musical one, was fourteen when I was; and Sally, the tomboy with short
hair, was a year younger. She was nearly as strong as I, and uncannily
clever at all boys' sports. Sally was a wild thing, with sunburned yellow
hair, bobbed about her ears, and a brown skin, for she never wore a hat.
She raced all over town on one roller skate, often cheated at "keeps," but
was such a quick shot one could n't catch her at it.

The grown-up daughter, Frances, was a very important person in our world.
She was her father's chief clerk, and virtually managed his Black Hawk
office during his frequent absences. Because of her unusual business
ability, he was stern and exacting with her. He paid her a good salary,
but she had few holidays and never got away from her responsibilities.
Even on Sundays she went to the office to open the mail and read the
markets. With Charley, who was not interested in business, but was already
preparing for Annapolis, Mr. Harling was very indulgent; bought him guns
and tools and electric batteries, and never asked what he did with them.

Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall. In winter she wore a
sealskin coat and cap, and she and Mr. Harling used to walk home together
in the evening, talking about grain-cars and cattle, like two men.
Sometimes she came over to see grandfather after supper, and her visits
flattered him. More than once they put their wits together to rescue some
unfortunate farmer from the clutches of Wick Cutter, the Black Hawk
money-lender. Grandfather said Frances Harling was as good a judge of
credits as any banker in the county. The two or three men who had tried to
take advantage of her in a deal acquired celebrity by their defeat. She
knew every farmer for miles about; how much land he had under cultivation,
how many cattle he was feeding, what his liabilities were. Her interest in
these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in
her mind as if they were characters in a book or a play.

When Frances drove out into the country on business, she would go miles
out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who
seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who
spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell
her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country
funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer's daughter who was to be
married could count on a wedding present from Frances Harling.

In August the Harlings' Danish cook had to leave them. Grandmother
entreated them to try Antonia. She cornered Ambrosch the next time he came
to town, and pointed out to him that any connection with Christian Harling
would strengthen his credit and be of advantage to him. One Sunday Mrs.
Harling took the long ride out to the Shimerdas' with Frances. She said
she wanted to see "what the girl came from" and to have a clear
understanding with her mother. I was in our yard when they came driving
home, just before sunset. They laughed and waved to me as they passed, and
I could see they were in great good humor. After supper, when grandfather
set off to church, grandmother and I took my short cut through the willow
hedge and went over to hear about the visit to the Shimerdas.

We found Mrs. Harling with Charley and Sally on the front porch, resting
after her hard drive. Julia was in the hammock--she was fond of repose--and
Frances was at the piano, playing without a light and talking to her
mother through the open window.

Mrs. Harling laughed when she saw us coming. "I expect you left your
dishes on the table to-night, Mrs. Burden," she called. Frances shut the
piano and came out to join us.

They had liked Antonia from their first glimpse of her; felt they knew
exactly what kind of girl she was. As for Mrs. Shimerda, they found her
very amusing. Mrs. Harling chuckled whenever she spoke of her. "I expect I
am more at home with that sort of bird than you are, Mrs. Burden. They're
a pair, Ambrosch and that old woman!"

They had had a long argument with Ambrosch about Antonia's allowance for
clothes and pocket-money. It was his plan that every cent of his sister's
wages should be paid over to him each month, and he would provide her with
such clothing as he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly
that she would keep fifty dollars a year for Antonia's own use, he
declared they wanted to take his sister to town and dress her up and make
a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a lively account of Ambrosch's
behavior throughout the interview; how he kept jumping up and putting on
his cap as if he were through with the whole business, and how his mother
tweaked his coat-tail and prompted him in Bohemian. Mrs. Harling finally
agreed to pay three dollars a week for Antonia's services--good wages in
those days--and to keep her in shoes. There had been hot dispute about the
shoes, Mrs. Shimerda finally saying persuasively that she would send Mrs.
Harling three fat geese every year to "make even." Ambrosch was to bring
his sister to town next Saturday.

"She'll be awkward and rough at first, like enough," grandmother said
anxiously, "but unless she's been spoiled by the hard life she's led, she
has it in her to be a real helpful girl."

Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided laugh. "Oh, I'm not worrying, Mrs.
Burden! I can bring something out of that girl. She's barely seventeen,
not too old to learn new ways. She's good-looking, too!" she added warmly.

Frances turned to grandmother. "Oh, yes, Mrs. Burden, you did n't tell us
that! She was working in the garden when we got there, barefoot and
ragged. But she has such fine brown legs and arms, and splendid color in
her cheeks--like those big dark red plums."

We were pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke feelingly. "When she
first came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man to watch
over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a
life she's led, out in the fields with those rough thrashers! Things would
have been very different with poor Antonia if her father had lived."

The Harlings begged us to tell them about Mr. Shimerda's death and the big
snowstorm. By the time we saw grandfather coming home from church we had
told them pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas.

"The girl will be happy here, and she'll forget those things," said Mrs.
Harling confidently, as we rose to take our leave.

ON Saturday Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Antonia jumped down
from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She was
wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave me a
playful shake by the shoulders. "You ain't forget about me, Jim?"

Grandmother kissed her. "God bless you, child! Now you've come, you must
try to do right and be a credit to us."

Antonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. "Maybe I be
the kind of girl you like better, now I come to town," she suggested
hopefully.

How good it was to have Antonia near us again; to see her every day and
almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that she
so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children. She would
race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fights in the
barn, or be the old bear that came down from the mountain and carried off
Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by the time school began she
could speak as well as any of us.

I was jealous of Tony's admiration for Charley Harling. Because he was
always first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipes or
the door-bell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a sort
of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for her. She
loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mend his
ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind of
nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips with
his father. Antonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr.
Harling's old coats, and in these she went padding about after Charley,
fairly panting with eagerness to please him.

Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and she
was rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful, had all
sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At the slightest
disappointment or displeasure her velvety brown eyes filled with tears,
and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If we ran after her
and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked on unmollified. I
used to think that no eyes in the world could grow so large or hold so
many tears as Nina's. Mrs. Harling and Antonia invariably took her part.
We were never given a chance to explain. The charge was simply: "You have
made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and Sally must get her arithmetic."
I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint and unexpected, and her eyes were
lovely; but I often wanted to shake her.

We had jolly evenings at the Harlings when the father was away. If he was
at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came over to my
house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he demanded
all his wife's attention. He used to take her away to their room in the
west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening. Though we did
not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when we played, and we
always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing flattered one like her quick
laugh.

Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by the
window, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was at home,
I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me an arrogant
shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to any one else if he was there. Before
he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmon or anchovies
and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and a French coffee-pot,
and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of the night he happened to
want it.

Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domestic
ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby carriage after office hours,
moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving on
Sunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in
his ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man
who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so
haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something
daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the "nobles" of
whom Antonia was always talking probably looked very much like Christian
Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a glittering diamond
upon the little finger.

Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.
Mrs. Harling and Nina and Antonia made as much noise as a houseful of
children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the only
one who was held down to regular hours of practicing, but they all played.
When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was ready. When
Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and coat and drummed
the plantation melodies that negro minstrel troupes brought to town. Even
Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.

Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow she
managed to practice every day. I soon learned that if I were sent over on
an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down and wait
quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment; her short,
square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat hands moving
quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the music with
intelligent concentration.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Book II: The Hired Girls Parts I - III Part I The section begins with the Burden family deciding to move into the town of Black Hawk, just as Jim reaches age 13. The Burdens are getting old, and they don't feel like they are up to the work anymore. Jake and Otto are no longer needed, so they help the Burdens move into Black Hawk, and then they get on the train and leave to become prospectors in Colorado. Otto sends Jim a letter a few months later, but a response is returned unclaimed, and Jim never sees either of them again. The three of them adjust quickly to town life. Mr. Burden becomes a deacon in the church, Mrs. Burden becomes active in the social functions that go along with that, and Jim becomes much like the local schoolboys. Their neighbor, Mrs. Harling, exercises a civilizing influence on Jim by setting limits on his behavior in front of her children. The location of their house in town makes it easier for their friends and neighbors from their farming days to visit them, and they often do. The Burdens hear news of their friends and neighbors this way, and they hear that Ambrosch has begun hiring Antonia out like any farm-hand, and that people prefer to hire her over Ambrosch. Upset by this, Mrs. Burden decides to get Antonia a position in the town, and she finds Antonia a job with Mrs. Harling. Part II Mrs. Harling is jolly and intelligent, and she rules her family firmly in her husband's frequent absences. Mr. Christian Harling is a wealthy and prominent businessman in the grain elevator business. Their grown daughter, Frances, is a capable assistant to her father and often circulates among members of the community, both for social and business reasons. The Harlings have three children about Jim's age - Charley, the only son, who plans to enter the Navy; Julia, who is the "musical one" and is a little older than Jim; and Sally, who is a little younger than Jim and is known as a tomboy. They also have a young daughter, Nina, who has enormous brown eyes and a very fickle and delicate temper. When the Harlings' cook leaves them, Mrs. Burden convinces Mrs. Harling to hire Antonia. Mrs. Harling travels out to the Shimerda farm to see Antonia, and after some haggling with Ambrosch about wages, they reach an agreement, and Antonia becomes a member of the Harling household. Part III  Antonia becomes an important part of the family, as both a cook and a willing playfellow for the children. She develops a strong preference for Charley, and takes extra care with his wishes in the house. But Mr. Harling remains the ruler of the household, and he expects quiet in the house when he is home, as well as his wife's attention. When he is not home, the house is quite noisy. Everyone in the family plays the piano, except Charley.


prompt:
Chapter: "I won't have none of your weevily wheat, and I won't have none of your
              barley,
  But I'll take a measure of fine white flour, to make a cake for
              Charley."

WE were singing rhymes to tease Antonia while she was beating up one of
Charley's favorite cakes in her big mixing-bowl. It was a crisp autumn
evening, just cold enough to make one glad to quit playing tag in the
yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun to roll popcorn balls
with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and Tony dropped her
spoon and went to open it. A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the
doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her
blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl drawn neatly
about her shoulders and a clumsy pocketbook in her hand.

"Hello, Tony. Don't you know me?" she asked in a smooth, low voice,
looking in at us archly.

Antonia gasped and stepped back. "Why, it's Lena! Of course I did n't know
you, so dressed up!"

Lena Lingard laughed, as if this pleased her. I had not recognized her for
a moment, either. I had never seen her before with a hat on her head--or
with shoes and stockings on her feet, for that matter. And here she was,
brushed and smoothed and dressed like a town girl, smiling at us with
perfect composure.

"Hello, Jim," she said carelessly as she walked into the kitchen and
looked about her. "I've come to town to work, too, Tony."

"Have you, now? Well, ain't that funny!" Antonia stood ill at ease, and
did n't seem to know just what to do with her visitor.

The door was open into the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat crocheting
and Frances was reading. Frances asked Lena to come in and join them.

"You are Lena Lingard, are n't you? I've been to see your mother, but you
were off herding cattle that day. Mama, this is Chris Lingard's oldest
girl."

Mrs. Harling dropped her worsted and examined the visitor with quick, keen
eyes. Lena was not at all disconcerted. She sat down in the chair Frances
pointed out, carefully arranging her pocketbook and gray cotton gloves on
her lap. We followed with our popcorn, but Antonia hung back--said she had
to get her cake into the oven.

"So you have come to town," said Mrs. Harling, her eyes still fixed on
Lena. "Where are you working?"

"For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. She
says I have quite a knack. I'm through with the farm. There ain't any end
to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I'm going to be
a dressmaker."

"Well, there have to be dressmakers. It's a good trade. But I would n't
run down the farm, if I were you," said Mrs. Harling rather severely. "How
is your mother?"

"Oh, mother's never very well; she has too much to do. She'd get away from
the farm, too, if she could. She was willing for me to come. After I learn
to do sewing, I can make money and help her."

"See that you don't forget to," said Mrs. Harling skeptically, as she took
up her crocheting again and sent the hook in and out with nimble fingers.

"No, 'm, I won't," said Lena blandly. She took a few grains of the popcorn
we pressed upon her, eating them discreetly and taking care not to get her
fingers sticky.

Frances drew her chair up nearer to the visitor. "I thought you were going
to be married, Lena," she said teasingly. "Did n't I hear that Nick
Svendsen was rushing you pretty hard?"

Lena looked up with her curiously innocent smile. "He did go with me quite
a while. But his father made a fuss about it and said he would n't give
Nick any land if he married me, so he's going to marry Annie Iverson. I
would n't like to be her; Nick's awful sullen, and he'll take it out on
her. He ain't spoke to his father since he promised."

Frances laughed. "And how do you feel about it?"

"I don't want to marry Nick, or any other man," Lena murmured. "I've seen
a good deal of married life, and I don't care for it. I want to be so I
can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief of
anybody."

"That's right," said Frances. "And Mrs. Thomas thinks you can learn
dressmaking?"

"Yes, 'm. I've always liked to sew, but I never had much to do with. Mrs.
Thomas makes lovely things for all the town ladies. Did you know Mrs.
Gardener is having a purple velvet made? The velvet came from Omaha. My,
but it's lovely!" Lena sighed softly and stroked her cashmere folds. "Tony
knows I never did like out-of-door work," she added.

Mrs. Harling glanced at her. "I expect you'll learn to sew all right,
Lena, if you'll only keep your head and not go gadding about to dances all
the time and neglect your work, the way some country girls do."

"Yes, 'm. Tiny Soderball is coming to town, too. She's going to work at
the Boys' Home Hotel. She'll see lots of strangers," Lena added wistfully.

"Too many, like enough," said Mrs. Harling. "I don't think a hotel is a
good place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps an eye on her
waitresses."

Lena's candid eyes, that always looked a little sleepy under their long
lashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms with naive admiration.
Presently she drew on her cotton gloves. "I guess I must be leaving," she
said irresolutely.

Frances told her to come again, whenever she was lonesome or wanted advice
about anything. Lena replied that she did n't believe she would ever get
lonesome in Black Hawk.

She lingered at the kitchen door and begged Antonia to come and see her
often. "I've got a room of my own at Mrs. Thomas's, with a carpet."

Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers. "I'll come sometime, but
Mrs. Harling don't like to have me run much," she said evasively.

"You can do what you please when you go out, can't you?" Lena asked in a
guarded whisper. "Ain't you crazy about town, Tony? I don't care what
anybody says, I'm done with the farm!" She glanced back over her shoulder
toward the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat.

When Lena was gone, Frances asked Antonia why she had n't been a little
more cordial to her.

"I did n't know if your mother would like her coming here," said Antonia,
looking troubled. "She was kind of talked about, out there."

"Yes, I know. But mother won't hold it against her if she behaves well
here. You need n't say anything about that to the children. I guess Jim
has heard all that gossip?"

When I nodded, she pulled my hair and told me I knew too much, anyhow. We
were good friends, Frances and I.

I ran home to tell grandmother that Lena Lingard had come to town. We were
glad of it, for she had a hard life on the farm.

Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw Creek, and she used
to herd her father's cattle in the open country between his place and the
Shimerdas'. Whenever we rode over in that direction we saw her out among
her cattle, bareheaded and barefooted, scantily dressed in tattered
clothing, always knitting as she watched her herd. Before I knew Lena, I
thought of her as something wild, that always lived on the prairie,
because I had never seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair was burned to a
ruddy thatch on her head; but her legs and arms, curiously enough, in
spite of constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculous whiteness which
somehow made her seem more undressed than other girls who went scantily
clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I was astonished at her
soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out there usually got rough
and mannish after they went to herding. But Lena asked Jake and me to get
off our horses and stay awhile, and behaved exactly as if she were in a
house and were accustomed to having visitors. She was not embarrassed by
her ragged clothes, and treated us as if we were old acquaintances. Even
then I noticed the unusual color of her eyes--a shade of deep violet--and
their soft, confiding expression.

Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and he had a large family.
Lena was always knitting stockings for little brothers and sisters, and
even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of her, admitted that she was a
good daughter to her mother. As Tony said, she had been talked about. She
was accused of making Ole Benson lose the little sense he had--and that at
an age when she should still have been in pinafores.

             [Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings]

Ole lived in a leaky dugout somewhere at the edge of the settlement. He
was fat and lazy and discouraged, and bad luck had become a habit with
him. After he had had every other kind of misfortune, his wife, "Crazy
Mary," tried to set a neighbor's barn on fire, and was sent to the asylum
at Lincoln. She was kept there for a few months, then escaped and walked
all the way home, nearly two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding
in barns and haystacks by day. When she got back to the Norwegian
settlement, her poor feet were as hard as hoofs. She promised to be good,
and was allowed to stay at home--though every one realized she was as crazy
as ever, and she still ran about barefooted through the snow, telling her
domestic troubles to her neighbors.

Not long after Mary came back from the asylum, I heard a young Dane, who
was helping us to thrash, tell Jake and Otto that Chris Lingard's oldest
girl had put Ole Benson out of his head, until he had no more sense than
his crazy wife. When Ole was cultivating his corn that summer, he used to
get discouraged in the field, tie up his team, and wander off to wherever
Lena Lingard was herding. There he would sit down on the draw-side and
help her watch her cattle. All the settlement was talking about it. The
Norwegian preacher's wife went to Lena and told her she ought not to allow
this; she begged Lena to come to church on Sundays. Lena said she had n't
a dress in the world any less ragged than the one on her back. Then the
minister's wife went through her old trunks and found some things she had
worn before her marriage.

The next Sunday Lena appeared at church, a little late, with her hair done
up neatly on her head, like a young woman, wearing shoes and stockings,
and the new dress, which she had made over for herself very becomingly.
The congregation stared at her. Until that morning no one--unless it were
Ole--had realized how pretty she was, or that she was growing up. The
swelling lines of her figure had been hidden under the shapeless rags she
wore in the fields. After the last hymn had been sung, and the
congregation was dismissed, Ole slipped out to the hitch-bar and lifted
Lena on her horse. That, in itself, was shocking; a married man was not
expected to do such things. But it was nothing to the scene that followed.
Crazy Mary darted out from the group of women at the church door, and ran
down the road after Lena, shouting horrible threats.

"Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out! I'll come over with a corn-knife
one day and trim some of that shape off you. Then you won't sail round so
fine, making eyes at the men! {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

The Norwegian women did n't know where to look. They were formal
housewives, most of them, with a severe sense of decorum. But Lena Lingard
only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh and rode on, gazing back over
her shoulder at Ole's infuriated wife.

The time came, however, when Lena did n't laugh. More than once Crazy Mary
chased her across the prairie and round and round the Shimerdas'
cornfield. Lena never told her father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhaps
she was more afraid of his anger than of the corn-knife. I was at the
Shimerdas' one afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grass as
fast as her white legs could carry her. She ran straight into the house
and hid in Antonia's feather-bed. Mary was not far behind; she came right
up to the door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing us very
graphically just what she meant to do to Lena. Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out
of the window, enjoyed the situation keenly, and was sorry when Antonia
sent Mary away, mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out
from Tony's room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the
feathers, but otherwise calm. She begged Antonia and me to go with her,
and help get her cattle together; they were scattered and might be gorging
themselves in somebody's cornfield.

"Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyes at
married men," Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly.

Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. "I never made anything to him with my
eyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. It
ain't my prairie."

AFTER Lena came to Black Hawk I often met her downtown, where she would be
matching sewing silk or buying "findings" for Mrs. Thomas. If I happened
to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping
to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball
at the hotel on Saturday nights.

The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all
the commercial travelers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk
for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlor after supper on Saturday
nights. Marshall Field's man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played the piano and sang
all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helped the cook wash the
dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of the double doors between the
parlor and the dining-room, listening to the music and giggling at the
jokes and stories. Lena often said she hoped I would be a traveling man
when I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all day and go to theaters when they were in big cities. Behind the
hotel there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas,
though she was "retail trade," was permitted to see them and to "get
ideas." They were all generous, these traveling men; they gave Tiny
Soderball handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and
so many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed
some of them on Lena.

One afternoon in the week before Christmas I came upon Lena and her funny,
square-headed little brother Chris, standing before the drug-store, gazing
in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's arks arranged in the frosty show
window. The boy had come to town with a neighbor to do his Christmas
shopping, for he had money of his own this year. He was only twelve, but
that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and
making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been,
too!

We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me--something for each of the six younger than
himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one of Tiny
Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought he would get
some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he had n't much
money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out for view at
Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in the corner, because
he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously, while Lena looked
over his shoulder, telling him she thought the red letters would hold
their color best. He seemed so perplexed that I thought perhaps he had n't
enough money, after all. Presently he said gravely,--

"Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought to get
B for Berthe, or M for Mother."

Lena patted his bristly head. "I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please her
for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now."

That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds and
three blues. When the neighbor came in to say that it was time to start,
Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket
collar--he had no overcoat--and we watched him climb into the wagon and
start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the windy street,
Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woolen glove. "I get awful
homesick for them, all the same," she murmured, as if she were answering
some remembered reproach.

WINTER comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind
that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens
that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw
closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green
tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than
when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.

In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I
could n't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late
afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to
me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify--it was like
the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and
the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs
and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter
song, as if it said: "This is reality, whether you like it or not. All
those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of
green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was
underneath. This is the truth." It was as if we were being punished for
loving the loveliness of summer.

If I loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-office
for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, it
would be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; the
frozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights were shining
pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the suppers cooking as I
passed. Few people were abroad, and each one of them was hurrying toward a
fire. The glowing stoves in the houses were like magnets. When one passed
an old man, one could see nothing of his face but a red nose sticking out
between a frosted beard and a long plush cap. The young men capered along
with their hands in their pockets, and sometimes tried a slide on the icy
sidewalk. The children, in their bright hoods and comforters, never
walked, but always ran from the moment they left their door, beating their
mittens against their sides. When I got as far as the Methodist Church, I
was about halfway home. I can remember how glad I was when there happened
to be a light in the church, and the painted glass window shone out at us
as we came along the frozen street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for
color came over people, like the Laplander's craving for fats and sugar.
Without knowing why, we used to linger on the sidewalk outside the church
when the lamps were lighted early for choir practice or prayer-meeting,
shivering and talking until our feet were like lumps of ice. The crude
reds and greens and blues of that colored glass held us there.

On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings' windows drew me like the
painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was color, too. After
supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets, and dive
through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Of course, if Mr.
Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the blind of the west
room, I did not go in, but turned and walked home by the long way, through
the street, wondering what book I should read as I sat down with the two
old people.

Such disappointments only gave greater zest to the nights when we acted
charades, or had a costume ball in the back parlor, with Sally always
dressed like a boy. Frances taught us to dance that winter, and she said,
from the first lesson, that Antonia would make the best dancer among us.
On Saturday nights, Mrs. Harling used to play the old operas for
us,--"Martha," "Norma," "Rigoletto,"--telling us the story while she played.
Every Saturday night was like a party. The parlor, the back parlor, and
the dining-room were warm and brightly lighted, with comfortable chairs
and sofas, and gay pictures on the walls. One always felt at ease there.
Antonia brought her sewing and sat with us--she was already beginning to
make pretty clothes for herself. After the long winter evenings on the
prairie, with Ambrosch's sullen silences and her mother's complaints, the
Harlings' house seemed, as she said, "like Heaven" to her. She was never
too tired to make taffy or chocolate cookies for us. If Sally whispered in
her ear, or Charley gave her three winks, Tony would rush into the kitchen
and build a fire in the range on which she had already cooked three meals
that day.

While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy
to cool, Nina used to coax Antonia to tell her stories--about the calf that
broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning in the
freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Nina
interpreted the stories about the creche fancifully, and in spite of our
derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia a short
time before the Shimerdas left that country. We all liked Tony's stories.
Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky,
and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said
seemed to come right out of her heart.

One evening when we were picking out kernels for walnut taffy, Tony told
us a new story.

"Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear about what happened up in the Norwegian
settlement last summer, when I was thrashing there? We were at Iversons',
and I was driving one of the grain wagons."

Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among us. "Could you throw the wheat
into the bin yourself, Tony?" She knew what heavy work it was.

"Yes, mam, I did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boy that
drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got back to
the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put in the
horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the deck,
cutting bands. I was sitting against a straw stack, trying to get some
shade. My wagon was n't going out first, and somehow I felt the heat awful
that day. The sun was so hot like it was going to burn the world up. After
a while I see a man coming across the stubble, and when he got close I see
it was a tramp. His toes stuck out of his shoes, and he had n't shaved for
a long while, and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some
sickness. He comes right up and begins to talk like he knows me already.
He says: 'The ponds in this country is done got so low a man could n't
drownd himself in one of 'em.'

"I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we did n't have
rain soon we'd have to pump water for the cattle.

"'Oh, cattle,' he says, 'you'll all take care of your cattle! Ain't you
got no beer here?' I told him he'd have to go to the Bohemians for beer;
the Norwegians did n't have none when they thrashed. 'My God!' he says,
'so it's Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.'

"Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, 'Hello,
partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I'm tired of trampin'. I
won't go no farther.'

"I tried to make signs to Ole, 'cause I thought that man was crazy and
might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out of
the sun and chaff--it gets down your neck and sticks to you something awful
when it's hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the
wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right
for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to me and
jumped head-first right into the thrashing machine after the wheat.

"I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt had
sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped he was all beat and
cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to get him out,
and the machine ain't never worked right since."

"Was he clear dead, Tony?" we cried.

"Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There, now, Nina's all upset. We won't
talk about it. Don't you cry, Nina. No old tramp won't get you while
Tony's here."

Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly. "Stop crying, Nina, or I'll always send you
upstairs when Antonia tells us about the country. Did they never find out
where he came from, Antonia?"

"Never, mam. He had n't been seen nowhere except in a little town they
call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there was n't any saloon.
Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman had n't seen him. They
could n't find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife
in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of
paper, and some poetry."

"Some poetry?" we exclaimed.

"I remember," said Frances. "It was 'The Old Oaken Bucket,' cut out of a
newspaper and nearly worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the office and
showed it to me."

"Now, was n't that strange, Miss Frances?" Tony asked thoughtfully. "What
would anybody want to kill themselves in summer for? In thrashing time,
too! It's nice everywhere then."

"So it is, Antonia," said Mrs. Harling heartily. "Maybe I'll go home and
help you thrash next summer. Is n't that taffy nearly ready to eat? I've
been smelling it a long while."

There was a basic harmony between Antonia and her mistress. They had
strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and
were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and
animals and music, and rough play and digging in the earth. They liked to
prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to make up soft white
beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people
and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there
was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but
very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly
conscious of it. I could not imagine Antonia's living for a week in any
other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings'.

WINTER lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and
shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and
men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and
pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.

Through January and February I went to the river with the Harlings on
clear nights, and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires on the
frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and choppy, and the snow on
the river bluffs was gray and mournful-looking. I was tired of school,
tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirty drifts and
the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long. There was only
one break in the dreary monotony of that month; when Blind d'Arnault, the
negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert at the Opera House on
Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturday and Sunday at our
comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d'Arnault for years. She told
Antonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturday evening, as there
would certainly be music at the Boys' Home.

Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the hotel and slipped
quietly into the parlor. The chairs and sofas were already occupied, and
the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlor had once been two
rooms, and the floor was sway-backed where the partition had been cut
away. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stove
glowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the middle stood
open.

There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night, for
Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for a week. Johnnie had been having drinks
with the guests until he was rather absent-minded. It was Mrs. Gardener
who ran the business and looked after everything. Her husband stood at the
desk and welcomed incoming travelers. He was a popular fellow, but no
manager.

Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the best-dressed woman in Black Hawk, drove
the best horse, and had a smart trap and a little white-and-gold sleigh.
She seemed indifferent to her possessions, was not half so solicitous
about them as her friends were. She was tall, dark, severe, with something
Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face. Her manner was cold, and
she talked little. Guests felt that they were receiving, not conferring, a
favor when they stayed at her house. Even the smartest traveling men were
flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped to chat with them for a moment. The
patrons of the hotel were divided into two classes; those who had seen
Mrs. Gardener's diamonds, and those who had not.

When I stole into the parlor Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was
at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago.
He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with
friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did
not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture
salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, who traveled
for a jewelry house and sold musical instruments. The talk was all about
good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musical prodigies. I learned
that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear Booth and Barrett, who were
to play there next week, and that Mary Anderson was having a great success
in "A Winter's Tale," in London.

The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener came in, directing
Blind d'Arnault,--he would never consent to be led. He was a heavy, bulky
mulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of him with
his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, with a show
of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelids lay
motionless over his blind eyes.

"Good evening, gentlemen. No ladies here? Good-evening, gentlemen. We
going to have a little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play for me
this evening?" It was the soft, amiable negro voice, like those I
remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience in
it. He had the negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behind the
ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would have been
repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It was the
happiest face I had seen since I left Virginia.

He felt his way directly to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticed
the nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he was
sitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, like a
rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and when he was
not playing, his body kept up this motion, like an empty mill grinding on.
He found the pedals and tried them, ran his yellow hands up and down the
keys a few times, tinkling off scales, then turned to the company.

"She seems all right, gentlemen. Nothing happened to her since the last
time I was here. Mrs. Gardener, she always has this piano tuned up before
I come. Now, gentlemen, I expect you've all got grand voices. Seems like
we might have some good old plantation songs to-night."

The men gathered round him, as he began to play "My Old Kentucky Home."
They sang one negro melody after another, while the mulatto sat rocking
himself, his head thrown back, his yellow face lifted, its shriveled
eyelids never fluttering.

He was born in the Far South, on the d'Arnault plantation, where the
spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeks old
he had an illness which left him totally blind. As soon as he was old
enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, the nervous
motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young negro wench
who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that her blind baby was
"not right" in his head, and she was ashamed of him. She loved him
devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his "fidgets,"
that she hid him away from people. All the dainties she brought down from
the "Big House" were for the blind child, and she beat and cuffed her
other children whenever she found them teasing him or trying to get his
chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early, remembered everything
he heard, and his mammy said he "was n't all wrong." She named him Samson,
because he was blind, but on the plantation he was known as "yellow
Martha's simple child." He was docile and obedient, but when he was six
years old he began to run away from home, always taking the same
direction. He felt his way through the lilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up
to the south wing of the "Big House," where Miss Nellie d'Arnault
practiced the piano every morning. This angered his mother more than
anything else he could have done; she was so ashamed of his ugliness that
she could n't bear to have white folks see him. Whenever she caught him
slipping away from the cabin, she whipped him unmercifully, and told him
what dreadful things old Mr. d'Arnault would do to him if he ever found
him near the "Big House." But the next time Samson had a chance, he ran
away again. If Miss d'Arnault stopped practicing for a moment and went
toward the window, she saw this hideous little pickaninny, dressed in an
old piece of sacking, standing in the open space between the hollyhock
rows, his body rocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and
wearing an expression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell
Martha that the child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his
foolish, happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing
was nearly all he had,--though it did not occur to her that he might have
more of it than other children.

One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie was playing her lesson
to her music-master. The windows were open. He heard them get up from the
piano, talk a little while, and then leave the room. He heard the door
close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuck his head in:
there was no one there. He could always detect the presence of any one in
a room. He put one foot over the window sill and straddled it. His mother
had told him over and over how his master would give him to the big
mastiff if he ever found him "meddling." Samson had got too near the
mastiff's kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face. He
thought about that, but he pulled in his other foot.

Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touched
it softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stood still.
Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger tips along the slippery
sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conception of its shape
and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. It was cold and
hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its
mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the
mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be
done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this
highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled himself
to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of
him. After he had tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out
passages from things Miss Nellie had been practicing, passages that were
already his, that lay under the bones of his pinched, conical little
skull, definite as animal desires. The door opened; Miss Nellie and her
music-master stood behind it, but blind Samson, who was so sensitive to
presences, did not know they were there. He was feeling out the pattern
that lay all ready-made on the big and little keys. When he paused for a
moment, because the sound was wrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie
spoke softly. He whirled about in a spasm of terror, leaped forward in the
dark, struck his head on the open window, and fell screaming and bleeding
to the floor. He had what his mother called a fit. The doctor came and
gave him opium.

When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to the piano.
Several teachers experimented with him. They found he had absolute pitch,
and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could repeat, after a
fashion, any composition that was played for him. No matter how many wrong
notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the
substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his
teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any
finish. He was always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and
wonderfully. As piano playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it
was something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than
his other physical senses,--that not only filled his dark mind, but worried
his body incessantly. To hear him, to watch him, was to see a negro
enjoying himself as only a negro can. It was as if all the agreeable
sensations possible to creatures of flesh and blood were heaped up on
those black and white keys, and he were gloating over them and trickling
them through his yellow fingers.

In the middle of a crashing waltz d'Arnault suddenly began to play softly,
and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered, "Somebody
dancing in there." He jerked his bullet head toward the dining-room. "I
hear little feet,--girls, I 'spect."

Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom. Springing
down, he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining-room. Tiny
and Lena, Antonia and Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of the
floor. They separated and fled toward the kitchen, giggling.

Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows. "What's the matter with you girls?
Dancing out here by yourselves, when there's a roomful of lonesome men on
the other side of the partition! Introduce me to your friends, Tiny."

The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape. Tiny looked alarmed.
"Mrs. Gardener would n't like it," she protested. "She'd be awful mad if
you was to come out here and dance with us."

"Mrs. Gardener's in Omaha, girl. Now, you're Lena, are you?--and you're
Tony and you're Mary. Have I got you all straight?"

O'Reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables. Johnnie
Gardener ran in from the office.

"Easy, boys, easy!" he entreated them. "You'll wake the cook, and there'll
be the devil to pay for me. She won't hear the music, but she'll be down
the minute anything's moved in the dining-room."

"Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook and wire Molly to bring
another. Come along, nobody'll tell tales."

Johnnie shook his head. "'S a fact, boys," he said confidentially. "If I
take a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!"

His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. "Oh, we'll make it all
right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie."

Molly was Mrs. Gardener's name, of course. "Molly Bawn" was painted in
large blue letters on the glossy white side of the hotel bus, and "Molly"
was engraved inside Johnnie's ring and on his watch-case--doubtless on his
heart, too. He was an affectionate little man, and he thought his wife a
wonderful woman; he knew that without her he would hardly be more than a
clerk in some other man's hotel.

At a word from Kirkpatrick, d'Arnault spread himself out over the piano,
and began to draw the dance music out of it, while the perspiration shone
on his short wool and on his uplifted face. He looked like some glistening
African god of pleasure, full of strong, savage blood. Whenever the
dancers paused to change partners or to catch breath, he would boom out
softly, "Who's that goin' back on me? One of these city gentlemen, I bet!
Now, you girls, you ain't goin' to let that floor get cold?"

Antonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly at Lena
and Tiny over Willy O'Reilly's shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trim and
slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles--she wore her dresses
very short. She was quicker in speech, lighter in movement and manner than
the other girls. Mary Dusak was broad and brown of countenance, slightly
marked by smallpox, but handsome for all that. She had beautiful chestnut
hair, coils of it; her forehead was low and smooth, and her commanding
dark eyes regarded the world indifferently and fearlessly. She looked bold
and resourceful and unscrupulous, and she was all of these. They were
handsome girls, had the fresh color of their country up-bringing, and in
their eyes that brilliancy which is called,--by no metaphor, alas!--"the
light of youth."

D'Arnault played until his manager came and shut the piano. Before he left
us, he showed us his gold watch which struck the hours, and a topaz ring,
given him by some Russian nobleman who delighted in negro melodies, and
had heard d'Arnault play in New Orleans. At last he tapped his way
upstairs, after bowing to everybody, docile and happy. I walked home with
Antonia. We were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed. We lingered a
long while at the Harlings' gate, whispering in the cold until the
restlessness was slowly chilled out of us.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Parts IV - VII Part IV  Lena Lingard suddenly enters the story, and she appears to be familiar to Jim and Antonia. She has a reputation among the farmers for things that are not her fault, and the narrator shares some of that reputation. Her father made her herd the cattle, and standing out among the cows with a ragged dress on was enough to arouse the attention of a nearby married farmer, Ole Benson, whose wife  had been put in an asylum and escaped. Ole Benson would walk away from his farming chores and find Lena, helping her with the cows. Mary was enraged by this and the way that the townspeople gossiped about it, so the minister's wife gave Lena some old dresses to wear. She remade them to her liking, and came to church dressed in her new clothes, and people seemed to realize that she was a beautiful young woman. Ole Benson helped her on her horse, and Crazy Mary ran after her and chased her down the road. Lena shocked some of her Norwegian neighbors by laughing about this, but Crazy Mary eventually became more frightening, chasing Lena around the Shimerdas' property and making threats with a large knife. Though Lena was accused of "making eyes" at Ole Benson, she tells the Shimerdas that she didn't, and that she couldn't order him away because she couldn't claim the land that she was herding cows on. Part V Lena appears in Black Hawk and finds Antonia, telling her that she has a position in town working for the local dressmaker. She has her own apartment, too, and invites Antonia to come and visit. Lena also tells Antonia that another friend, Tiny Soderball, has also come to town to work in the local hotel. Antonia is a little uncertain about how Mrs. Harling will view Lena and Antonia's friendship with her, and Mrs. Harling seems to disapprove of Lena's open distaste for farming and her interest in clothes and remaining unmarried. Frances engages her in conversation as well, asking about Lena's engagement with Nick Svendsen. Lena says that Nick's family threatened to cut off his inheritance if he married Lena, so Nick married another girl. After this visit, Jim begins running into Lena in town. Through her, he hears about Tiny and her job. Both Lena and Tiny are much impressed by the parade of traveling salesmen who come through the hotel. Jim also participates in helping Lena's younger brother, Chris, come to town to spend some of his money on gifts for his mother. Lena seems a little homesick after she watches her brother leave, but she remains resolute in her decision to live in Black Hawk. Part VI That winter, Jim becomes an even more devoted visitor to the Harlings' house. He turns away when Mr. Harling is home, because he knows that much of the fun will be out of bounds in his presence. On the nights when Mr. Harling is not at home, Jim starts to learn to dance from Frances, and he and the children also hear old operas from Mrs. Harling. Antonia is a joyful participant in much of this, contributing with her cooking. When she is cooking, she takes to telling stories, and her stories become an important part of the entertainment. On one of these evenings, Antonia tells the story of threshing wheat on a farm last summer, when a vagrant comes by and asks for beer. They don't have any to offer, so he asks if he can help them. He asks if he can stand on top of the thresher and "cut bands," and after a few minutes of work, he jumps head-first into the machine and kills himself. They eventually manage to get his body out of the machine, and find that he carries only some strange odds and ends and a copy of the poem, "The Old Oaken Bucket." This story upsets Nina, and Mrs. Harling quiets her by threatening to make her go upstairs for all of Antonia's stories in the future. The narrator points out, after this story, that Mrs. Harling and Antonia had a lot in common, and that he  couldn't imagine Antonia living anywhere else. Part VII As the winter wears on, Jim starts to get frustrated with the cold and its hassles. In the middle of this, Blind d'Arnault, an African-American piano player, comes to town, and Mrs. Harling tells Antonia that she should go and see him play at the hotel where Tiny Soderball works. Jim decides to attend as well, and he enters the parlor that night to find that Mrs. Gardener, the real manager of the hotel, has left town to see two famous actors in a production in Omaha. The room is full of expectant listeners, mostly hotel guests, when Johnnie Gardener leads the blind pianist out to the piano. He makes a few jokes and begins playing, while the audience sings along to his well-known, traditional music . The narrator tells the pianist's story, too. As a very young slave on a plantation, he found his way into the plantation house from the sound of the piano, and was caught trying to play it. He was given lessons by an indulgent master as a "Negro prodigy," and learned to play in his own fashion. He seemed to lack accuracy, but he had an enormous sense of rhythm that seemed to overpower him, and might have even caused his physical shaking when he wasn't playing. In the middle of a song, d'Arnault suddenly drops his volume and whispers that he hears dancing in the next room. Anson Kirkpatrick, a salesman for Marshall Field, throws open the doors and finds Tiny, Antonia, Lena, and Mary Dusak waltzing. They try to run, but he catches them. He invites them to dance with some of the men, but Tiny says that Mrs. Gardener would not like them to be dancing together. The men start clearing space for dancing, but Johnnie Gardener runs in among them and tells them to stop. He is worried that the cook will hear, and that the cook will tell his wife. Anson and the others convince him to allow it. They dance, with d'Arnault prodding them to continue, until the piano player's manager comes and closes the piano. Jim and Antonia walk home together, staying out in the cold to talk for a while after all of the excitement of the dance.