clattery way with pans.
Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antonia worked for
us.

[Illustration: Jim and Antonia in the garden]

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The
harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the
house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat
lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame
of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a
beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut
grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when
the dishes were washed Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of
the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic,
like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags
across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a
moment. Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the
west was luminous and clear: in the lightning-flashes it looked like deep
blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the
sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid sea-coast
city, doomed to destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our
upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out
into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we
could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the
farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we would
get wet out there.

"In a minute we come," Antonia called back to her. "I like your
grandmother, and all things here," she sighed. "I wish my papa live to see
this summer. I wish no winter ever come again."

"It will be summer a long while yet," I reassured her. "Why are n't you
always nice like this, Tony?"

"How nice?"

"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be
like Ambrosch?"

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I
live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But
they will be hard for us."

BOOK II--THE HIRED GIRLS

I

I HAD been living with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the
heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to b