hey have a dancing bear, like in the
old country, and two three merry-go-around, and people in balloons, and
what you call the big wheel, Rudolph?"

"A Ferris wheel," Rudolph entered the conversation in a deep baritone
voice. He was six foot two, and had a chest like a young blacksmith. "We
went to the big dance in the hall behind the saloon last night, mother,
and I danced with all the girls, and so did father. I never saw so many
pretty girls. It was a Bohunk crowd, for sure. We did n't hear a word of
English on the street, except from the show people, did we, papa?"

Cuzak nodded. "And very many send word to you, Antonia. You will
excuse"--turning to me--"if I tell her." While we walked toward the house he
related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spoke fluently,
and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what their relations had
become--or remained. The two seemed to be on terms of easy friendliness,
touched with humor. Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective.
As they went up the hill he kept glancing at her sidewise, to see whether
she got his point, or how she received it. I noticed later that he always
looked at people sidewise, as a work-horse does at its yoke-mate. Even
when he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a
little toward the clock or the stove and look at me from the side, but
with frankness and good-nature. This trick did not suggest duplicity or
secretiveness, but merely long habit, as with the horse.

He had brought a tintype of himself and Rudolph for Antonia's collection,
and several paper bags of candy for the children. He looked a little
disappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I had got in
Denver--she had n't let the children touch it the night before. He put his
candy away in the cupboard, "for when she rains," and glanced at the box,
chuckling. "I guess you must have hear about how my family ain't so
small," he said.

Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his women-folk and the little
children with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thought
they were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girls and
forgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rather surprised
him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these children should belong to
him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking
things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon p