Chapter: 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.

 Lena and Tiny listen to Anson Kirkpatrick, "Marshall Field's man," play the piano and tell jokes and stories at the Boys' Home Hotel on Saturday nights. Lena tells Jim that she hopes he'll become a traveling salesman when he grows up because they lead such colorful lives. Jim watches Lena help her little brother, Chris, buy a Christmas present for their mother at the dry goods store. Chris doesn't know whether to get a handkerchief monogrammed with a "B" for Berthe or with an "M" for Mother; Lena advises him to get one with a "B" -- it will please her because no one calls her by her name anymore. When a neighbor comes in to fetch Chris for the long ride home, Lena watches her brother climb into the wagon and she admits to Jim that she misses her family sometimes. Winter clamps down hard on the town. Jim spends his evenings at the Harlings' whenever he can because he finds life there more exciting than with his elderly grandparents. When Mr. Harling isn't home, the children listen to music, play charades, make taffy, dance, and tell stories. One evening, Antonia tells about a tramp who committed suicide by diving headfirst into a threshing machine; she can't understand why anyone would want to die in the summertime. A pleasant break in the monotony of winter comes one Saturday night when Jim goes to the hotel to hear Blind d'Arnault, a black pianist. The musician has the happiest face Jim has seen since he left Virginia. Blind d'Arnault hears the hired girls -- Tiny, Mary Dusak, Lena, and Antonia -- dancing in the dining room, and Anson Kirkpatrick coaxes them to come into the parlor and dance with the men, although Mr. Gardener feels uneasy about this irregularity. Afterward, Jim walks Antonia back to the Harlings, and they stand talking outside the front gate until the cold chills the restlessness out of them.

