n't like this country ought to stay at home," I said
severely. "We don't make them come here."

"He not want to come, nev-er!" she burst out. "My mamenka make him come.
All the time she say: 'America big country; much money, much land for my
boys, much husband for my girls.' My papa, he cry for leave his old
friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the
long horn like this"--she indicated a slide trombone. "They go to school
together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be
rich, with many cattle."

"Your mama," I said angrily, "wants other people's things."

"Your grandfather is rich," she retorted fiercely. "Why he not help my
papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very
smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here."

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda
and Antonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly with them
and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything
their own way. Though Antonia loved her father more than she did any one
else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.

After I watched Antonia and her mother go over the hill on their miserable
horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to grandmother, who had
taken up her darning, and said I hoped that snooping old woman would n't
come to see us any more.

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in Otto's
sock. "She's not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, I
would n't mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knows
what traits poverty might bring out in 'em. It makes a woman grasping to
see her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in 'The Prince of
the House of David.' Let's forget the Bohemians."

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corral
ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we hoped
they would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big bulls,
Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began to
tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them.
Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth with their
hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far
corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other at a gallop.
Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, and thei