She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her, feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, I wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in her silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her face from me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the dark prairie.
I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while she unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambrosch had come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at the tank.
Ántonia took my hand. ‘Sometime you will tell me all those nice things you learn at the school, won’t you, Jimmy?’ she asked with a sudden rush of feeling in her voice. ‘My father, he went much to school. He know a great deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. He play horn and violin, and he read so many books that the priests in Bohemie come to talk to him. You won’t forget my father, Jim?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I will never forget him.’
Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Ántonia had washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee with the cake that had been kept warm in the feathers. Ántonia and Ambrosch were talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more ploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while she gobbled her food.
Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: ‘You take them ox tomorrow and try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart.’
His sister laughed. ‘Don’t be mad. I know it’s awful hard work for break sod. I milk the cow for you tomorrow, if you want.’
Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. ‘That cow not give so much milk like what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him back the cow.’
‘He doesn’t talk about the fifteen dollars,’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘He doesn’t find fault with people.’
‘He say I break his saw when we build, and I never,’ grumbled Ambrosch.
I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I began to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable to me. Ántonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother had said, ‘Heavy field work’ll spoil that girl. She’ll lose all her nice ways and get rough ones.’ She had lost them already.