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Page 37
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.
Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: `You take them ox tomorrow
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 tomorrow, 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 doesn't talk about the fifteen dollars,' I exclaimed indignantly. `He
doesn'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
sunup until sundown. 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 farm-hands 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
Antonia!'
XVIII
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 Taking 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 womenfolk. 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.
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