The little children, who could not speak English,
murmured comments to each other in their rich old language.
Antonia held out a photograph of Lena that had come from San Francisco
last Christmas. "Does she still look like that? She has n't been home for
six years now." Yes, it was exactly like Lena, I told her; a comely woman,
a trifle too plump, in a hat a trifle too large, but with the old lazy
eyes, and the old dimpled ingenuousness still lurking at the corners of
her mouth.
There was a picture of Frances Harling in a be-frogged riding costume that
I remembered well. "Is n't she fine!" the girls murmured. They all
assented. One could see that Frances had come down as a heroine in the
family legend. Only Leo was unmoved.
"And there's Mr. Harling, in his grand fur coat. He was awfully rich, was
n't he, mother?"
"He was n't any Rockefeller," put in Master Leo, in a very low tone, which
reminded me of the way in which Mrs. Shimerda had once said that my
grandfather "was n't Jesus." His habitual skepticism was like a direct
inheritance from that old woman.
"None of your smart speeches," said Ambrosch severely.
Leo poked out a supple red tongue at him, but a moment later broke into a
giggle at a tintype of two men, uncomfortably seated, with an
awkward-looking boy in baggy clothes standing between them; Jake and Otto
and I! We had it taken, I remembered, when we went to Black Hawk on the
first Fourth of July I spent in Nebraska.
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