ing that he thought we should have a dry
spring and that the corn would not be held
back by too much rain, as it had been last
year.

She gave me a shrewd glance. "He not
Jesus," she blustered; "he not know about
the wet and the dry."

I did not answer her; what was the use? As
I sat waiting for the hour when Ambrosch
and Antonia would return from the fields,
I watched Mrs. Shimerda at her work. She
took from the oven a coffee-cake which she
wanted to keep warm for supper, and wrapped
it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have
seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to
keep it hot. When the neighbors were there
building the new house they saw her do this,
and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas
kept their food in their feather beds.

When the sun was dropping low, Antonia
came up the big south draw with her team.
How much older she had grown in eight
months! She had come to us a child, and
now she was a tall, strong young girl, al-
though her fifteenth birthday had just slipped
by. I ran out and met her as she brought her
horses up to the windmill to water them. She

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