ing to make up for it ever
since.' On summer afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalk
in front of his laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watching
his girls through the big open window while they ironed and talked in
Danish. The clouds of white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of
hot wind that withered his vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm.
His droll expression seemed to say that he had found the secret of
contentment. Morning and evening he drove about in his spring wagon,
distributing freshly ironed clothes, and collecting bags of linen that
cried out for his suds and sunny drying-lines. His girls never looked so
pretty at the dances as they did standing by the ironing-board, or over
the tubs, washing the fine pieces, their white arms and throats bare,
their cheeks bright as the brightest wild roses, their gold hair moist
with the steam or the heat and curling in little damp spirals about
their ears. They had not learned much English, and were not so ambitious
as Tony or Lena; but they were kind, simple girls and they were always
happy. When one danced with them, one smelled their clean, freshly
ironed clothes that had been put away with rosemary leaves from Mr.
Jensen's garden.

There were never girls enough to go round at those dances, but everyone
wanted a turn with Tony and Lena.

Lena moved without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand often
accented the rhythm softly on her partner's shoulder. She smiled if one
spoke to her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into a
soft, waking dream, and her violet-coloured eyes looked sleepily and
confidingly at one from under her long lashes. When she sighed she
exhaled a heavy perfume of sachet powder. To dance 'Home, Sweet Home,'
with Lena was like coming in with the tide. She danced every dance like
a waltz, and it was always the same waltz--the waltz of coming home to
something, of inevitable, fated return. After a while one got restless
under it, as one does under the heat of a soft, sultry summer day.

When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you didn't return to
anything. You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked to
schottische with her; she had so much spring and variety, and was always
putting in new steps and slides. She taught me to dance against and
around the hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to the
end of the railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked
up a