erests revived in me. It seemed,
after all, so natural to be walking along a barbed-wire fence beside the
sunset, toward a red pond, and to see my shadow moving along at my right,
over the close-cropped grass.

"Has mother shown you the pictures you sent her from the old country?"
Ambrosch asked. "We've had them framed and they're hung up in the parlor.
She was so glad to get them. I don't believe I ever saw her so pleased
about anything." There was a note of simple gratitude in his voice that
made me wish I had given more occasion for it.

I put my hand on his shoulder. "Your mother, you know, was very much loved
by all of us. She was a beautiful girl."

"Oh, we know!" They both spoke together; seemed a little surprised that I
should think it necessary to mention this. "Everybody liked her, did n't
they? The Harlings and your grandmother, and all the town people."

"Sometimes," I ventured, "it does n't occur to boys that their mother was
ever young and pretty."

"Oh, we know!" they said again, warmly. "She's not very old now," Ambrosch
added. "Not much older than you."

"Well," I said, "if you were n't nice to her, I think I'd take a club and
go for the whole lot of you. I could n't stand it if you boys were
inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked
after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I
know there's nobody like her."

The boys laughed and seemed pleased and embarrassed. "She never told us
that," said Anton. "But she's always talked lots about you, and about what
good times you used to have. She has a picture of you that she cut out of
the Chicago paper once, and Leo says he recognized you when you drove up
to the windmill. You can't tell about Leo, though; sometimes he likes to
be smart."

We brought the cows home to the corner nearest the barn, and the boys
milked them while night came on. Everything was as it should be: the
strong smell of sunflowers and ironweed in the dew, the clear blue and
gold of the sky, the evening star, the purr of the milk into the pails,
the grunts and squeals of the pigs fighting over their supper. I began to
feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at evening, when the chores seem
everlastingly the same, and the world so far away.

What a tableful we were at supper; two long rows of restless heads in the
lamplight, and so many eyes fastened excitedly upon Antonia as she sat at
the head of the table, filling the plates a