One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Ántonia and her mother rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit. It was the first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said: ‘You got many, Shimerdas no got.’ I thought it weak-minded of grandmother to give the pot to her.
After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said, tossing her head: ‘You got many things for cook. If I got all things like you, I make much better.’
She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Ántonia and listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well.
‘My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance. Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days he take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the strings, like this, but never he make the music. He don’t like this kawntree.’
‘People who don’t like this country ought to stay at home,’ I said severely. ‘We don’t make them come here.’
‘He not want to come, never!’ she burst out. ‘My mamenka make him come. All the time she say: “America big country; much money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls.” My papa, he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the long horn like this’—she indicated a slide trombone. “They go to school together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be rich, with many cattle.”’
‘Your mama,’ I said angrily, ‘wants other people’s things.’
“Your grandfather is rich,” she retorted fiercely. ‘Why he not help my papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here.’
Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda and Ántonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly with them and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything their own way. Though Ántonia loved her father more than she did anyone else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.
After I watched Ántonia and her mother go over the hill on their miserable horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to grandmother, who had taken up her darning, and said I hoped that snooping old woman wouldn’t come to see us any more.