right, all right. We got this place clear now.
We pay only twenty dollars an acre then, and
I been offered a hundred. We bought another
quarter ten years ago, and we got it most paid
for. We got plenty boys; we can work a lot
of land. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor
man. She ain't always so strict with me,
neither. Sometimes maybe I drink a little too
much beer in town, and when I come home she
don't say nothing. She don't ask me no ques-
tions. We always get along fine, her and me,
like at first. The children don't make trouble
between us, like sometimes happens." He lit
another pipe and pulled on it contentedly.

I found Cuzak a most companionable fel-
low. He asked me a great many questions
about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna
and the Ringstrasse and the theaters.

"Gee! I like to go back there once, when the
boys is big enough to farm the place. Some-
times when I read the papers from the old
country, I pretty near run away," he con-
fessed with a little laugh. "I never did think
how I would be a settled man like this."

He was still, as Antonia said, a city man.
He liked theaters and lighted streets and mu-
sic and a game of dominoes after the day's

[[412]]

p411 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p412w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p413

v?