in for hat,"--she told off these
benefits on her fingers.

Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and lifted
it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of old Hata.
He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his fingers, and stood
looking down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly, he
listened as if it were a beautiful sound.

I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece from the old country,
short and heavy, with a stag's head on the cock. When he saw me examining
it, he turned to me with his far-away look that always made me feel as if
I were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly and gravely, and
Antonia translated:--

"My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine, from
Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you not got
here; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play for his
wedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you."

[Illustration: Mr. Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over
his shoulder]

I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were such
people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had. Even
the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she expected
substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly silence, while
the feeble minstrel sheltered in Antonia's hair went on with its scratchy
chirp. The old man's smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness, of
pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it. As the sun sank there
came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of earth and drying grass.
Antonia and her father went off hand in hand, and I buttoned up my jacket
and raced my shadow home.

VII

MUCH as I liked Antonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes took
with me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen more of
the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented her
protecting manner. Before the autumn was over she began to treat me more
like an equal and to defer to me in other things than reading lessons.
This change came about from an adventure we had together.

One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas' I found Antonia starting off on
foot for Russian Peter's house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. I
offered to take her on the pony, and she got up behind me. There had been
another black frost th