assive head had always seemed to me like a Roman senator's. I
told her at once why I had come.

"You'll stay the night with us, Jimmy? I'll talk to you after supper. I
can take more interest when my work is off my mind. You've no prejudice
against hot biscuit for supper? Some have, these days."

While I was putting my horse away I heard a rooster squawking. I looked at
my watch and sighed; it was three o'clock, and I knew that I must eat him
at six.

After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went upstairs to the old sitting-room,
while her grave, silent brother remained in the basement to read his farm
papers. All the windows were open. The white summer moon was shining
outside, the windmill was pumping lazily in the light breeze. My hostess
put the lamp on a stand in the corner, and turned it low because of the
heat. She sat down in her favorite rocking-chair and settled a little
stool comfortably under her tired feet. "I'm troubled with callouses, Jim;
getting old," she sighed cheerfully. She crossed her hands in her lap and
sat as if she were at a meeting of some kind.

"Now, it's about that dear Antonia you want to know? Well, you've come to
the right person. I've watched her like she'd been my own daughter.

"When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was to be
married, she was over here about every day. They've never had a sewing
machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here. I taught her
hemstitching, and I helped her to cut and fit. She used to sit there at
that machine by the window, pedaling the life out of it--she was so
strong--and always singing them queer Bohemian songs, like she was the
happiest thing in the world.

"'Antonia,' I used to say, 'don't run that machine so fast. You won't
hasten the day none that way.'

"Then she'd laugh and slow down for a little, but she'd soon forget and
begin to pedal and sing again. I never saw a girl work harder to go to
housekeeping right and well-prepared. Lovely table linen the Harlings had
given her, and Lena Lingard had sent her nice things from Lincoln. We
hemstitched all the tablecloths and pillow-cases, and some of the sheets.
Old Mrs. Shimerda knit yards and yards of lace for her underclothes. Tony
told me just how she meant to have everything in her house. She'd even
bought silver spoons and forks, and kept them in her trunk. She was always
coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Her young man did write her real
often, from the di