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 the night before, and the air was clear and heady as
wine. Within a week all the blooming roads had been despoiled, hundreds of
miles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling, burry
stalks.
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