You can show him the parlour after while.' She smiled at me, and went
back to the dishes, with her sister. The little girl with the rag doll
found a place on the bottom step of an enclosed back stairway, and sat
with her toes curled up, looking out at us expectantly.

'She's Nina, after Nina Harling,' Antonia explained. 'Ain't her eyes
like Nina's? I declare, Jim, I loved you children almost as much as I
love my own. These children know all about you and Charley and Sally,
like as if they'd grown up with you. I can't think of what I want to
say, you've got me so stirred up. And then, I've forgot my English so.
I don't often talk it any more. I tell the children I used to speak
real well.' She said they always spoke Bohemian at home. The little
ones could not speak English at all--didn't learn it until they went to
school.

'I can't believe it's you, sitting here, in my own kitchen. You wouldn't
have known me, would you, Jim? You've kept so young, yourself. But it's
easier for a man. I can't see how my Anton looks any older than the day
I married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I haven't got many left.
But I feel just as young as I used to, and I can do as much work. Oh,
we don't have to work so hard now! We've got plenty to help us, papa and
me. And how many have you got, Jim?'

When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. 'Oh, ain't
that too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo;
he's the worst of all.' She leaned toward me with a smile. 'And I love
him the best,' she whispered.

'Mother!' the two girls murmured reproachfully from the dishes.

Antonia threw up her head and laughed. 'I can't help it. You know I do.
Maybe it's because he came on Easter Day, I don't know. And he's never
out of mischief one minute!'

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered--about her
teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things
that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was
gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and
hardened, had not that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had
been secretly drawn away.

While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in and
sat down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. He
wore a funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, and
his hair was clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. He
watched us out