dren at our heels. The boys
were standing by the windmill, talking about the dog; some of them ran
ahead to open the cellar door. When we descended, they all came down after
us, and seemed quite as proud of the cave as the girls were. Ambrosch, the
thoughtful-looking one who had directed me down by the plum bushes, called
my attention to the stout brick walls and the cement floor. "Yes, it is a
good way from the house," he admitted. "But, you see, in winter there are
nearly always some of us around to come out and get things."

Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one full of dill pickles,
one full of chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds.

"You would n't believe, Jim, what it takes to feed them all!" their mother
exclaimed. "You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and
Saturdays! It's no wonder their poor papa can't get rich, he has to buy so
much sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground for
flour,--but then there's that much less to sell."

Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out to me
the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but glancing at me, traced
on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherries and
strawberries and crab-apples within, trying by a blissful expression of
countenance to give me some idea of their deliciousness.

"Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those," said one
of the older boys. "Mother uses them to make kolaches," he added.

Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark in Bohemian.

I turned to him. "You think I don't know what kolaches are, eh? You're
mistaken, young man. I've eaten your mother's kolaches long before that
Easter day when you were born."

"Always too fresh, Leo," Ambrosch remarked with a shrug.

Leo dived behind his mother and grinned out at me.

We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and
the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came
running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads
and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life
out of the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment.

The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which I had n't yet seen;
in farmhouses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door. The roof was
so steep that the eaves were not much above the forest of tall hollyhocks,
now brown and