She was out in the fields from
sunup until sundown. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing,
she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then gripped her
plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow, making
me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. On Sundays she
helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased
with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled and said, `She
will help some fellow get ahead in the world.'
Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much
she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew,
too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and
that the farm-hands around the country joked in a nasty way about it.
Whenever I saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned,
sweaty, her dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest
dust-plastered, I used to think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who
could say so little, yet managed to say so much when he exclaimed, `My
Antonia!'
XVIII
AFTER I BEGAN TO go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We
were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback
and brought our dinner.
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