a 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 had n't been a little
more cordial to her.

"I did n'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 need n'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 of constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculous whiteness which
somehow made her seem more undressed than other girls who went scantily
clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I was astonished at her
soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out there usually got rough
and mannish after they went to herding. But Lena asked Jake and me to get
off our horses and stay awhile, and behaved exactly as if she were in a
house and were accustomed to having visitors. She was not embarrassed by
her ragged clothes, and treated us as if we were old acquaintances. Even
then I noticed the unusual color of her eyes--a shade of deep violet--and
their soft, confiding expression.

Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and he had a large family.
Lena was always knitting stockings for little brothers and sisters, and
even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of her, admitted that she was a
good daughter to her mother. As Tony said, she had been talked about. She
was accused of making Ole Benson lose the little sense h