She was
so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed to want to humble her. She never
went anywhere. All that summer she never once came to see me. At first I
was hurt, but I got to feel that it was because this house reminded her of
too much. I went over there when I could, but the times when she was in
from the fields were the times when I was busiest here. She talked about
the grain and the weather as if she'd never had another interest, and if I
went over at night she always looked dead weary. She was afflicted with
toothache; one tooth after another ulcerated, and she went about with her
face swollen half the time. She wouldn't go to Black Hawk to a dentist for
fear of meeting people she knew. Ambrosch had got over his good spell long
ago, and was always surly. Once I told him he ought not to let Antonia
work so hard and pull herself down. He said, "If you put that in her head,
you better stay home." And after that I did.
`Antonia worked on through harvest and threshing, though she was too modest
to go out threshing for the neighbours, like when she was young and free.
I didn't see much of her until late that fall when she begun to herd
Ambrosch's cattle in the open ground north of here, up toward the big
dog-town. Sometimes she used to bring them over the west hill, there, and I
would run to meet her and walk north a piece with her.
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