"I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemian
papers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open. What have you
two been doing?"

"Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my travels. I find
I can't talk much at home, not even to Eric."

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth that was
fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. "I suppose you will
never tell me about all those things."

"Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly. What's the
matter with our talking here?" He pointed persuasively with his hat
to the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing lazily
above the empty beer glasses.

Clara shook her head weakly. "No, it wouldn't do. Besides, I am going
now."

"I'm on Eric's mare. Would you be angry if I overtook you?"

Clara looked back and laughed. "You might try and see. I can leave you
if I don't want you. Eric's mare can't keep up with Norman."

Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six feet
four, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on the shoulder.
"Not a Goddamn a your money go in my drawer, you hear? Only next time
you bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty." Joe wagged his fingers in
imitation of the flute player's position.

"My Clara, she come all-a-time Sundays an' play for me. She not like to
play at Ericson's place." He shook his yellow curls and laughed. "Not a
Goddamn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. No forget
de flute." Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over his English.
He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had never learned much.

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west of the
village, where the houses and gardens scattered into prairie land and
the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the declining light, he saw
Clara Vavrika's slender figure, loitering on horseback. He touched his
mare with the whip, and shot along the white, level road, under the
reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf's wife he saw that she had been
crying. "What's the matter, Clara Vavrika?" he asked kindly.

"Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there with
father. I wonder why I ever went away."

Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women:
"That's what I've been wondering these many years. You were the last
girl in the country I'd have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made you
do it, Cla