“I whispered and asked her to come out of doors with me. I knew she could n’t talk free before her mother. She went out with me, bareheaded, and we walked up toward the garden.
“‘I’m not married, Mrs. Steavens,’ she says to me very quiet and natural-like, ‘and I ought to be.’
“‘Oh, my child,’ says I, ‘what’s happened to you? Don’t be afraid to tell me!’
“She sat down on the draw-side, out of sight of the house. ‘He’s run away from me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if he ever meant to marry me.’
“‘You mean he’s thrown up his job and quit the country?’ says I.
“‘He did n’t have any job. He’d been fired; blacklisted for knocking down fares. I did n’t know. I thought he had n’t been treated right. He was sick when I got there. He’d just come out of the hospital. He lived with me till my money gave out, and afterwards I found he had n’t really been hunting work at all. Then he just did n’t come back. One nice fellow at the station told me, when I kept going to look for him, to give it up. He said he was afraid Larry’d gone bad and would n’t come back any more. I guess he’s gone to Old Mexico. The conductors get rich down there, collecting half-fares off the natives and robbing the company. He was always talking about fellows who had got ahead that way.’
“I asked her, of course, why she did n’t insist on a civil marriage at once—that would have given her some hold on him. She leaned her head on her hands, poor child, and said, ‘I just don’t know, Mrs. Steavens. I guess my patience was wore out, waiting so long. I thought if he saw how well I could do for him, he’d want to stay with me.’
“Jimmy, I sat right down on that bank beside her and made lament. I cried like a young thing. I could n’t help it. I was just about heart-broke. It was one of them lovely warm May days, and the wind was blowing and the colts jumping around in the pastures; but I felt bowed with despair. My Ántonia, that had so much good in her, had come home disgraced. And that Lena Lingard, that was always a bad one, say what you will, had turned out so well, and was coming home here every summer in her silks and her satins, and doing so much for her mother. I give credit where credit is due, but you know well enough, Jim Burden, there is a great difference in the principles of those two girls. And here it was the good one that had come to grief! I was poor comfort to her. I marveled at her calm. As we went back to the house, she stopped to feel of her clothes to see if they was drying well, and seemed to take pride in their whiteness—she said she’d been living in a brick block, where she did n’t have proper conveniences to wash them.