My Antonia

indoors, and grandmother had a cold which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was

side his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among 'em over there, and they take turns w

ce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he'd shot. He asked me if they was go

father. "Josiah, you don't suppose Krajiek would

ee our neighbors to-morrow, E

ght to be good for food, but their family connections were against them. I

ng, I found grandmother and Jake pa

s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda could n't have got hens from her neighbors last fall and had a henhouse going by now. I reckon she was confused and did n

rajiek getting a leg of that old rooster." He tramped out th

the frosty whine of the pump and saw ántonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as

horses. We went slowly up the icy path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came

d not say "How do!" as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very fast in her own language

t, glancing up at her mother, hid again. ántonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunnysack stuffed with straw. As soon as we enter

rozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman laughed

er to Mrs. Shimerda's reproaches. Then the poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. G

o sad," she whispered, as she wiped her wet hands on

oises and stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time w

outside, ántonia? This is no place to keep

t-office,-what he throw out. We got no pota

y a fog about his head. He was clean and neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took grandmother's arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much

mean they sleep in there,-yo

there," she insisted eagerly. "My mamenka have nice bed,[pg 086] with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, J

I don't doubt you're warm there. You'll have a better house a

mia with more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm machinery, they had very little money left. He wished gr

the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the lo

d began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his queer noises for me-to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse,-but he did not dare i

we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened

ut her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon. "Very

her said drily. "I can't say but I

as if she could not express how good,-"it make very much when you cook, like what[p

d about how easily good Christian people co

? They're wanting in everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that, I guess. Jimmy, here,

bout him; but he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to g

little brown chips that looked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeab

and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I should n't want

never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had

g