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 paperhanger had
put on our parlour 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 threshers.
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 neighbours until Christmas, as she had done the year before; but
grandmother saved her from this by getting her a place to work with our
neighbours, the Harlings.

II

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 humour, short and intelligent. Her rapid
footsteps shook her own floo