While we were lying there against the warm bank, a
little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of the
buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. He missed it,
fell back, and sat with his head sunk between his long legs, his antennae
quivering, as if he were waiting for something to come and finish him.
Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gayly and
indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us--a thin, rusty
little chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a moment
afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that in her
village at home there was an old beggar woman who went about selling herbs
and roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took her in and gave her a
warm place by the fire, she sang old songs to the children in a cracked
voice, like this. Old Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see
her coming and saved their cakes and sweets for her.
When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow shelf
of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill came on
quickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin. What were we
to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to life by false
pretenses? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully put
the green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely over
her curls.
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