etermined. 'Stop going to the
tent?' she panted. 'I wouldn't think of it for a minute! My own father
couldn't make me stop! Mr. Harling ain't my boss outside my work. I
won't give up my friends, either. The boys I go with are nice fellows.
I thought Mr. Paine was all right, too, because he used to come here. I
guess I gave him a red face for his wedding, all right!' she blazed out
indignantly.

'You'll have to do one thing or the other, Antonia,' Mrs. Harling told
her decidedly. 'I can't go back on what Mr. Harling has said. This is
his house.'

'Then I'll just leave, Mrs. Harling. Lena's been wanting me to get a
place closer to her for a long while. Mary Svoboda's going away from the
Cutters' to work at the hotel, and I can have her place.'

Mrs. Harling rose from her chair. 'Antonia, if you go to the Cutters' to
work, you cannot come back to this house again. You know what that man
is. It will be the ruin of you.'

Tony snatched up the teakettle and began to pour boiling water over the
glasses, laughing excitedly. 'Oh, I can take care of myself! I'm a lot
stronger than Cutter is. They pay four dollars there, and there's no
children. The work's nothing; I can have every evening, and be out a lot
in the afternoons.'

'I thought you liked children. Tony, what's come over you?'

'I don't know, something has.' Antonia tossed her head and set her jaw.
'A girl like me has got to take her good times when she can. Maybe there
won't be any tent next year. I guess I want to have my fling, like the
other girls.'

Mrs. Harling gave a short, harsh laugh. 'If you go to work for the
Cutters, you're likely to have a fling that you won't get up from in a
hurry.'

Frances said, when she told grandmother and me about this scene, that
every pan and plate and cup on the shelves trembled when her mother
walked out of the kitchen. Mrs. Harling declared bitterly that she
wished she had never let herself get fond of Antonia.

XI

WICK CUTTER WAS the money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter.
When a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like
gambling or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he went back.

Cutter's first name was Wycliffe, and he liked to talk about his pious
bringing-up. He contributed regularly to the Protestant churches, 'for
sentiment's sake,' as he said with a flourish of the hand. He came from
a town in Iowa where there were a great many Swedes, and could speak
a little Sw