My Antonia

by Willa Cather

  V

  AFTER LENA CAME To Black Hawk, I often met her downtown, where shewould be matching sewing silk or buying 'findings' for Mrs. Thomas. IfI happened to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses shewas helping to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was withTiny Soderball at the hotel on Saturday nights.

  The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, andall the commercial travellers in that territory tried to get into BlackHawk for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlour after supper onSaturday nights. Marshall Field's man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played thepiano and sang all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helpedthe cook wash the dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of thedouble doors between the parlour and the dining-room, listening to themusic and giggling at the jokes and stories. Lena often said she hopedI would be a travelling man when I grew up. They had a gay life of it;nothing to do but ride about on trains all day and go to theatreswhen they were in big cities. Behind the hotel there was an old storebuilding, where the salesmen opened their big trunks and spread outtheir samples on the counters. The Black Hawk merchants went to look atthese things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas, though she was I retailtrade,' was permitted to see them and to 'get ideas.' They were allgenerous, these travelling men; they gave Tiny Soderball handkerchiefsand gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and so many bottles ofperfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed some of them onLena.

  One afternoon in the week before Christmas, I came upon Lena andher funny, square-headed little brother Chris, standing before thedrugstore, gazing in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's Arksarranged in the frosty show window. The boy had come to town with aneighbour to do his Christmas shopping, for he had money of his own thisyear. He was only twelve, but that winter he had got the job of sweepingout the Norwegian church and making the fire in it every Sunday morning.A cold job it must have been, too!

  We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all hispresents and showed them to me something for each of the six youngerthan himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one ofTiny Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought hewould get some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and hehadn't much money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread outfor view at Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in thecorner, because he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously,while Lena looked over his shoulder, telling him she thought the redletters would hold their colour best. He seemed so perplexed that Ithought perhaps he hadn't enough money, after all. Presently he saidgravely:

  'Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought toget B for Berthe, or M for Mother.'

  Lena patted his bristly head. 'I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will pleaseher for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now.'

  That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three redsand three blues. When the neighbour came in to say that it was time tostart, Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up hisjacket collar--he had no overcoat--and we watched him climb into thewagon and start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up thewindy street, Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woollen glove. 'Iget awful homesick for them, all the same,' she murmured, as if she wereanswering some remembered reproach.