come back, but life intervened, and it was twenty
years before I kept my promise. I heard of her from time to time; that she
married, very soon after I last saw her, a young Bohemian, a cousin of
Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a large family. Once when I
was abroad I went into Bohemia, and from Prague I sent Antonia some
photographs of her native village. Months afterward came a letter from
her, telling me the names and ages of her many children, but little else;
signed, "Your old friend, Antonia Cuzak." When I met Tiny Soderball in
Salt Lake, she told me that Antonia had not "done very well"; that her
husband was not a man of much force, and she had had a hard life. Perhaps
it was cowardice that kept me away so long. My business took me West
several times every year, and it was always in the back of my mind that I
would stop in Nebraska some day and go to see Antonia. But I kept putting
it off until the next trip. I did not want to find her aged and broken; I
really dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with
many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are
realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

I owe it to Lena Lingard that I went to see Antonia at last. I was in San
Francisco two summers ago when both Lena and Tiny Soderball were in town.
Tiny lives in a house of her own, and Lena's shop is in an apartment house
just around the corner. It interested me, after so many years, to see the
two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests
her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny does n't
grow too miserly. "If there's anything I can't stand," she said to me in
Tiny's presence, "it's a shabby rich woman." Tiny smiled grimly and
assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. "And I don't
want to be," the other agreed complacently.

Lena gave me a cheerful account of Antonia and urged me to make her a
visit.

"You really ought to go, Jim. It would be such a satisfaction to her.
Never mind what Tiny says. There's nothing the matter with Cuzak. You'd
like him. He is n't a hustler, but a rough man would never have suited
Tony. Tony has nice children--ten or eleven of them by this time, I guess.
I should n't care for a family of that size myself, but somehow it's just
right for Tony. She'd love to show them to you."

On my way East I broke my journey at Hastings, in Nebraska, a