up the tea-kettle 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 Swedish, which gave him a great advantage with the early
Scandinavian settlers.

In every frontier settlement there are men who have come there to escape
restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He
was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light
burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was
going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than
sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that
other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys.
When he came to our house on business, he quoted "Poor Richard's Almanack"
to me, and told me he was delighted to find a town boy who could milk a
cow. He was particularly affable to grandmother, and whenever they met he
would begin at once to talk about "the good old times" and simple living.
I detested his pink, bald head, and his yellow whiskers, always soft and
gli