hesitation in her voice that had
hurt me was not there when she spoke again.

'I oughtn't to have begun it, ought I?' she murmured. 'I oughtn't to
have gone to see you that first time. But I did want to. I guess I've
always been a little foolish about you. I don't know what first put it
into my head, unless it was Antonia, always telling me I mustn't be
up to any of my nonsense with you. I let you alone for a long while,
though, didn't I?'

She was a sweet creature to those she loved, that Lena Lingard!

At last she sent me away with her soft, slow, renunciatory kiss.

'You aren't sorry I came to see you that time?' she whispered. 'It
seemed so natural. I used to think I'd like to be your first sweetheart.
You were such a funny kid!'

She always kissed one as if she were sadly and wisely sending one away
forever.

We said many good-byes before I left Lincoln, but she never tried to
hinder me or hold me back. 'You are going, but you haven't gone yet,
have you?' she used to say.

My Lincoln chapter closed abruptly. I went home to my grandparents for a
few weeks, and afterward visited my relatives in Virginia until I joined
Cleric in Boston. I was then nineteen years old.

BOOK IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story

I

TWO YEARS AFTER I left Lincoln, I completed my academic course at
Harvard. Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summer
vacation. On the night of my arrival, Mrs. Harling and Frances and
Sally came over to greet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. My
grandparents looked very little older. Frances Harling was married now,
and she and her husband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk.
When we gathered in grandmother's parlour, I could hardly believe that I
had been away at all. One subject, however, we avoided all evening.

When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling at
her gate, she said simply, 'You know, of course, about poor Antonia.'

Poor Antonia! Everyone would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. I
replied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marry
Larry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had deserted
her, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.

'He never married her,' Frances said. 'I haven't seen her since she came
back. She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town.
She brought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she's
settled down to be Ambro