way.'

"I asked her, of course, why she did n't insist on a civil marriage at
once--that would have given her some hold on him. She leaned her head on
her hands, poor child, and said, 'I just don't know, Mrs. Steavens. I
guess my patience was wore out, waiting so long. I thought if he saw how
well I could do for him, he'd want to stay with me.'

"Jimmy, I sat right down on that bank beside her and made lament. I cried
like a young thing. I could n't help it. I was just about heart-broke. It
was one of them lovely warm May days, and the wind was blowing and the
colts jumping around in the pastures; but I felt bowed with despair. My
Antonia, that had so much good in her, had come home disgraced. And that
Lena Lingard, that was always a bad one, say what you will, had turned out
so well, and was coming home here every summer in her silks and her
satins, and doing so much for her mother. I give credit where credit is
due, but you know well enough, Jim Burden, there is a great difference in
the principles of those two girls. And here it was the good one that had
come to grief! I was poor comfort to her. I marveled at her calm. As we
went back to the house, she stopped to feel of her clothes to see if they
was drying well, and seemed to take pride in their whiteness--she said
she'd been living in a brick block, where she did n't have proper
conveniences to wash them.

"The next time I saw Antonia, she was out in the fields ploughing corn.
All that spring and summer she did the work of a man on the farm; it
seemed to be an understood thing. Ambrosch did n't get any other hand to
help him. Poor Marek had got violent and been sent away to an institution
a good while back. We never even saw any of Tony's pretty dresses. She did
n't take them out of her trunks. She was quiet and steady. Folks respected
her industry and tried to treat her as if nothing had happened. They
talked, to be sure; but not like they would if she'd put on airs. She was
so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed to want to humble her. She never
went anywhere. All that summer she never once came to see me. At first I
was hurt, but I got to feel that it was because this house reminded her of
too much. I went over there when I could, but the times when she was in
from the fields were the times when I was busiest here. She talked about
the grain and the weather as if she'd never had another interest, and if I
went over at night she always looked dead weary. She w