She don't ask me no
questions. We always get along fine, her and me, like at first. The
children don't make trouble between us, like sometimes happens.' He lit
another pipe and pulled on it contentedly.
I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked me a great many
questions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna and the Ringstrasse
and the theatres.
`Gee! I like to go back there once, when the boys is big enough to farm the
place. Sometimes when I read the papers from the old country, I pretty
near run away,' he confessed with a little laugh. `I never did think how I
would be a settled man like this.'
He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theatres and lighted
streets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over.
His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He liked to
live day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of the
crowd.--Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one of the
loneliest countries in the world.
I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill,
nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump, the
grunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens were disturbed
by a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been made the instrument
of Antonia's special mission.
Pages:
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342