arted out from the group of women at the church door, and ran
down the road after Lena, shouting horrible threats.

"Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out! I'll come over with a corn-knife
one day and trim some of that shape off you. Then you won't sail round so
fine, making eyes at the men! {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

The Norwegian women did n't know where to look. They were formal
housewives, most of them, with a severe sense of decorum. But Lena Lingard
only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh and rode on, gazing back over
her shoulder at Ole's infuriated wife.

The time came, however, when Lena did n't laugh. More than once Crazy Mary
chased her across the prairie and round and round the Shimerdas'
cornfield. Lena never told her father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhaps
she was more afraid of his anger than of the corn-knife. I was at the
Shimerdas' one afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grass as
fast as her white legs could carry her. She ran straight into the house
and hid in Antonia's feather-bed. Mary was not far behind; she came right
up to the door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing us very
graphically just what she meant to do to Lena. Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out
of the window, enjoyed the situation keenly, and was sorry when Antonia
sent Mary away, mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out
from Tony's room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the
feathers, but otherwise calm. She begged Antonia and me to go with her,
and help get her cattle together; they were scattered and might be gorging
themselves in somebody's cornfield.

"Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyes at
married men," Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly.

Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. "I never made anything to him with my
eyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. It
ain't my prairie."

V

AFTER Lena came to Black Hawk I often met her downtown, where she would be
matching sewing silk or buying "findings" for Mrs. Thomas. If I happened
to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping
to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball
at the hotel on Saturday nights.

The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all
the commercial travelers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk
for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlor after suppe