| III
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| ON SATURDAY AMBROSCH drove up to the back gate, and Antonia jumped
down from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do.
She was wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited.
She gave me a playful shake by the shoulders. `You ain't forget
about me, Jim?'
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| Grandmother kissed her. `God bless you, child! Now you've come,
you must try to do right and be a credit to us.'
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| Antonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything.
`Maybe I be the kind of girl you like better; now I come to town,'
she suggested hopefully.
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| How good it was to have Antonia near us again; to see her every day
and almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found,
was that she so often stopped her work and fell to playing
with the children. She would race about the orchard with us,
or take sides in our hay-fights in the barn, or be the old
bear that came down from the mountain and carried off Nina.
Tony learned English so quickly that by the time school began
she could speak as well as any of us.
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| I was jealous of Tony's admiration for Charley Harling.
Because he was always first in his classes at school,
and could mend the water-pipes or the doorbell and take
the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a sort of prince.
Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for her.
She loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting,
to mend his ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat,
baked the kind of nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog
when he was away on trips with his father. Antonia had made
herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr. Harling's old coats,
and in these she went padding about after Charley, fairly panting
with eagerness to please him.
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| Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six,
and she was rather more complex than the other children.
She was fanciful, had all sorts of unspoken preferences,
and was easily offended. At the slightest disappointment
or displeasure, her velvety brown eyes filled with tears,
and she would lift her chin and walk silently away.
If we ran after her and tried to appease her, it did no good.
She walked on unmollified. I used to think that no eyes
in the world could grow so large or hold so many tears as
Nina's. Mrs. Harling and Antonia invariably took her part.
We were never given a chance to explain. The charge was simply:
`You have made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and Sally
must get her arithmetic.' I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint
and unexpected, and her eyes were lovely; but I often wanted
to shake her.
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| We had jolly evenings at the Harlings' when the father was away.
If he was at home, the children had to go to bed early,
or they came over to my house to play. Mr. Harling not only
demanded a quiet house, he demanded all his wife's attention.
He used to take her away to their room in the west ell,
and talk over his business with her all evening.
Though we did not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience
when we played, and we always looked to her for suggestions.
Nothing flattered one like her quick laugh.
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| Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own
easy-chair by the window, in which no one else ever sat.
On the nights when he was at home, I could see his shadow
on the blind, and it seemed to me an arrogant shadow.
Mrs. Harling paid no heed to anyone else if he was there.
Before he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmon
or anchovies and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room,
and a French coffee-pot, and his wife made coffee for him
at any hour of the night he happened to want it.
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| Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their
domestic ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby-carriage
after office hours, moved the sprinkler about over the lawn,
and took the family driving on Sunday. Mr. Harling,
therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in his ways.
He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man
who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried
his head so haughtily that he looked a commanding figure,
and there was something daring and challenging in his eyes.
I used to imagine that the ,nobles' of whom Antonia was always
talking probably looked very much like Christian Harling,
wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a glittering
diamond upon the little finger.
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| Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.
Mrs. Harling and Nina and Antonia made as much noise as a houseful
of children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the only
one who was held down to regular hours of practising, but they all played.
When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was ready.
When Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and coat and drummed
the plantation melodies that Negro minstrel troupes brought to town.
Even Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.
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| Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher,
and somehow she managed to practise every day.
I soon learned that if I were sent over on an errand and found
Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down and wait quietly
until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment:
her short, square person planted firmly on the stool,
her little fat hands moving quickly and neatly over the keys,
her eyes fixed on the music with intelligent concentration.
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