I wondered whether the life
that was right for one was ever right for two!
I asked Cuzak if he did n't find it hard to do without the gay company he
had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright,
sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.
"At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness," he said frankly, "but my
woman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as she
could. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,
already!"
As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over one ear
and looked up at the moon. "Gee!" he said in a hushed voice, as if he had
just wakened up, "it don't seem like I am away from there twenty-six
year!"
III
AFTER dinner the next day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings to
take the train for Black Hawk. Antonia and her children gathered round my
buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me with
friendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. When I
reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was still there
by the windmill. Antonia was waving her apron.
At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy, resting his arm on the
wheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and ran off into the pasture.
"That's like him," his brother said with a shrug. "He's a crazy kid. Maybe
he's sorry to have you go, and maybe he's jealous.
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