United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'My old folks, said Tiny Soderball, 'have put in twenty acres of rye. They get it ground at the mill, and it makes nice bread. It seems like my mother ain't been so homesick, ever since father's raised rye flour for her. 'It must have been a trial for our mothers, said Lena, 'coming out here and having to do everything different. My mother had always lived in town.
Months afterward came a letter from her, telling me the names and ages of her many children, but little else; signed, “Your old friend, Ántonia Cuzak.” When I met Tiny Soderball in Salt Lake, she told me that Ántonia 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.
One of these city gentlemen, I bet! Now, you girls, you ain’t goin’ to let that floor get cold?” Ántonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly at Lena and Tiny over Willy O’Reilly’s shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trim and slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles—she wore her dresses very short.
When he was told that his feet must be amputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; what could a working-man do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact, die from the operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball his claim on Hunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money in Dawson building lots, and with the rest she developed her claim.
But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger, or out through the grating of his father's bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and striped stockings. The country girls were considered a menace to the social order.
One of these city gentlemen, I bet! Now, you girls, you ain't goin' to let that floor get cold? Antonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly at Lena and Tiny over Willy O'Reilly's shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trim and slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles she wore her dresses very short.
I remember how angry Tiny Soderball made me one afternoon. She declared she had heard grandmother was going to make a Baptist preacher of me. “I guess you’ll have to stop dancing and wear a white necktie then. Won’t he look funny, girls?” Lena laughed. “You’ll have to hurry up, Jim. If you’re going to be a preacher, I want you to marry me.
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.
'I expect you'll learn to sew all right, Lena, if you'll only keep your head and not go gadding about to dances all the time and neglect your work, the way some country girls do. 'Yes, 'm. Tiny Soderball is coming to town, too. She's going to work at the Boys' Home Hotel. She'll see lots of strangers, Lena added wistfully. 'Too many, like enough, said Mrs. Harling.
If I happened to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball at the hotel on Saturday nights. The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all the commercial travellers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk for Sunday.
Word Of The Day