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“De big market at Covent Garden ain’t very far away, an’ by dat time it was open. I go dere an’ buy goose an’ some pork pies, an’ potatoes and onions, an’ cakes an’ oranges fur de children- all I could carry! When I git home, everybody is still asleep. I pile all I bought on de kitchen table, an’ go in an’ lay down on my bed, an I ain’t waken up till I hear dat woman scream when she come out into her kitchen. My goodness, but she was surprise! She laugh an’ cry at de same time, an’ hug me and waken all de children. She ain’t stop fur no breakfast; she git de Christmas dinner ready dat morning, and we all sit down an’ eat all we can hold. I ain’t never seen dat violin boy have all he can hold before.

“Two-three days after dat, de two men come to hunt me up, an’ dey ask my boss, and he give me a good report an’ tell dem I was a steady boy all right. One of dem Bohemians was very smart an’ run a Bohemian newspaper in New York, an’ de odder was a rich man, in de importing business, an’ dey been traveling togedder. Dey told me how t’ings was easier in New York, an’ offered to pay my passage when dey was goin’ home soon on a boat. My boss say to me: ‘You go. You ain’t got no chance here, an’ I like to see you git ahead, fur you always been a good boy to my woman, and fur dat fine Christmas dinner you give us all.’ An’ da’s how I got to New York.”

That night when Rudolph and Polly, arm in arm, were running home across the fields with the bitter wind at their backs, his heart leaped for joy when she said she thought they might have his family come over for supper on New Year’s Eve.”Let’s get up a nice supper, and not let your mother help at all; make her be company for once.”

“That would be lovely of you, Polly,” he said humbly. He was a very simple, modest boy, and he, too, felt vaguely that Polly and her sisters were more experienced and worldly than his people.

VI

The winter turned out badly for farmers. It was bitterly cold, and after the first light snows before Christmas there was no snow at all- and no rain. March was as bitter as February. On those days when the wind fairly punished the country, Rosicky sat by his window. In the fall he and the boys had put in a big wheat planting, and now the seed had frozen in the ground. All that land would have to be ploughed up and planted over again, planted in corn. It had happened before, but he was younger then, and he never worried about what had to be. He was sure of himself and of Mary; he knew they could bear what they had to bear, that they would always pull through somehow. But he was not so sure about the young ones, and he felt troubled because Rudolph and Polly were having such a hard start.

Sitting beside his flowering window while the panes rattled and the wind blew in under the door, Rosicky gave himself to reflection as he had not done since those Sundays in the loft of the furniture factory in New York, long ago. Then he was trying to find what he wanted in life for himself; now he was trying to find what he wanted for his boys, and why it was he so hungered to feel sure they would be here, working this very land, after he was gone.