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<h2><span style="font-size: 144%">X</span></h2>
<p id="p0561"><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">It</span></span> was at the
Vannis’ tent that Ántonia was discovered. Hitherto she
had been looked upon more as a ward of the Harlings than as one of the
“hired girls.” She had lived in their house and yard and
garden; her thoughts never seemed to stray outside that little
kingdom. But after the tent came to town she began to go about with
Tiny and Lena and their friends. The Vannis often said that
Ántonia was the best dancer of them all. I sometimes heard
murmurs in the crowd outside the pavilion that <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span>
Harling would soon have her hands full with that girl. The young men
began to joke with each other about “the Harlings’
Tony” as they did about “the Marshalls’ Anna”
or “the Gardeners’ Tiny.”</p>
<p id="p0562">Ántonia talked and thought of nothing but the
tent. She hummed the dance tunes all day. When supper was late, she
hurried with her dishes, dropped and smashed them in her excitement.
At the first call of the music, she became irresponsible. If she had
n’t time to dress, she merely flung off her apron and shot
out of the kitchen door. Sometimes I went with her; the moment the
lighted tent came into view she would break into a run, like a boy.
There were always partners waiting for her; she began to dance before
she got her breath.</p>
<p id="p0563">Ántonia’s success at the tent had its
consequences. The iceman lingered too long now, when he came into the
covered porch to fill the refrigerator. The delivery boys hung about
the kitchen when they brought the groceries. Young farmers who were in
town for Saturday came tramping through the yard to the back door to
engage dances, or to invite Tony to parties and picnics. Lena and
Norwegian Anna dropped in to help her with her work, so that she could
get away early. The boys who brought her home after the dances
sometimes laughed at the back gate and wakened <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span>
Harling from his first sleep. A crisis was inevitable.</p>
<p id="p0564">One Saturday night <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span> Harling had gone
down to the cellar for beer. As he came up the stairs in the dark, he
heard scuffling on the back porch, and then the sound of a vigorous
slap. He looked out through the side door in time to see a pair of
long legs vaulting over
the picket fence. Ántonia was standing there, angry and
excited. Young Harry Paine, who was to marry his employer’s
daughter on Monday, had come to the tent with a crowd of friends and
danced all evening. Afterward, he begged Ántonia to let him
walk home with her. She said she supposed he was a nice young man, as
he was one of Miss Frances’s friends, and she did n’t
mind. On the back porch he tried to kiss her, and when she protested,—because he was going to be married on Monday,—he
caught her and kissed her until she got one hand free and slapped
him.</p>
<p id="p0565"><span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span> Harling put his beer bottles down on
the table. “This is what I’ve been expecting,
Ántonia. You’ve been going with girls who have a
reputation for being free and easy, and now you’ve got the same
reputation. I won’t have this and that fellow tramping about my
back yard all the time. This is the end of it, to-night. It stops,
short. You can quit going to these dances, or you can hunt another
place. Think it over.”</p>
<p id="p0566">The next morning when <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span> Harling and
Frances tried to reason with Ántonia, they found her agitated
but determined. “Stop going to the tent?” she panted.
“I would n’t
think of it for a minute! My own father could n’t make me stop!
<span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span> Harling ain’t my boss outside my work. I
won’t give up my friends, either. The boys I go with are nice
fellows. I thought <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span> Paine was all right, too, because
he used to come here. I guess I gave him a red face for his wedding,
all right!” she blazed out indignantly.</p>
<p id="p0567">“You’ll have to do one thing or the
other, Ántonia,” <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span> Harling told her
decidedly. “I can’t go back on what <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mr.</span>
Harling has said. This is his house.”</p>
<p id="p0568">“Then I’ll just leave, <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span>
Harling. Lena’s been wanting me to get a place closer to her for
a long while. Mary Svoboda’s going away from the Cutters’
to work at the hotel, and I can have her place.”</p>
<p id="p0569"><span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span> Harling rose from her chair.
“Ántonia, if you go to the
Cutters
to work, you cannot come back to this house again. You know what that
man is. It will be the ruin of you.”</p>
<p id="p0570">Tony snatched 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.”</p>
<p id="p0571">“I thought you liked children. Tony,
what’s come over you?”</p>
<p id="p0572">“I don’t know, something has.”
Ántonia 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.”</p>
<p id="p0573"><span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span> 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.”</p>
<p id="p0574">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. <span class="tei tei-abbr">Mrs.</span> Harling
declared bitterly that she wished she had never let herself get fond
of Ántonia.</p>
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