s coming to town, too. She's going to work
at the Boys' Home Hotel. She'll see lots of strangers,' Lena added
wistfully.

'Too many, like enough,' said Mrs. Harling. 'I don't think a hotel is a
good place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps an eye on her
waitresses.'

Lena's candid eyes, that always looked a little sleepy under their long
lashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms with naive admiration.
Presently she drew on her cotton gloves. 'I guess I must be leaving,'
she said irresolutely.

Frances told her to come again, whenever she was lonesome or wanted
advice about anything. Lena replied that she didn't believe she would
ever get lonesome in Black Hawk.

She lingered at the kitchen door and begged Antonia to come and see her
often. 'I've got a room of my own at Mrs. Thomas's, with a carpet.'

Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers. 'I'll come sometime, but
Mrs. Harling don't like to have me run much,' she said evasively.

'You can do what you please when you go out, can't you?' Lena asked in
a guarded whisper. 'Ain't you crazy about town, Tony? I don't care
what anybody says, I'm done with the farm!' She glanced back over her
shoulder toward the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat.

When Lena was gone, Frances asked Antonia why she hadn't been a little
more cordial to her.

'I didn't know if your mother would like her coming here,' said Antonia,
looking troubled. 'She was kind of talked about, out there.'

'Yes, I know. But mother won't hold it against her if she behaves well
here. You needn't say anything about that to the children. I guess Jim
has heard all that gossip?'

When I nodded, she pulled my hair and told me I knew too much, anyhow.
We were good friends, Frances and I.

I ran home to tell grandmother that Lena Lingard had come to town. We
were glad of it, for she had a hard life on the farm.

Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw Creek, and she used
to herd her father's cattle in the open country between his place and
the Shimerdas'. Whenever we rode over in that direction we saw her
out among her cattle, bareheaded and barefooted, scantily dressed in
tattered clothing, always knitting as she watched her herd. Before I
knew Lena, I thought of her as something wild, that always lived on the
prairie, because I had never seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair was
burned to a ruddy thatch on her head; but her legs and arms, curiously
enough, in spite