Lena and Tiny listen to Anson Kirkpatrick, “Marshall Field’s man,” play the piano and tell jokes and stories at the Boys’ Home Hotel on Saturday nights. Lena tells Jim that she hopes he’ll become a traveling salesman when he grows up because they lead such colorful lives. Jim watches Lena help her little brother, Chris, buy a Christmas present for their mother at the dry goods store. Chris doesn’t know whether to get a handkerchief monogrammed with a “B” for Berthe or with an “M” for Mother; Lena advises him to get one with a “B”—it will please her because no one calls her by her name anymore. When a neighbor comes in to fetch Chris for the long ride home, Lena watches her brother climb into the wagon and she admits to Jim that she misses her family sometimes.
Winter clamps down hard on the town. Jim spends his evenings at the Harlings’ whenever he can because he finds life there more exciting than with his elderly grandparents. When Mr. Harling isn’t home, the children listen to music, play charades, make taffy, dance, and tell stories. One evening, Ántonia tells about a tramp who committed suicide by diving headfirst into a threshing machine; she can’t understand why anyone would want to die in the summertime.
A pleasant break in the monotony of winter comes one Saturday night when Jim goes to the hotel to hear Blind d’Arnault, a black pianist. The musician has the happiest face Jim has seen since he left Virginia. Blind d’Arnault hears the hired girls—Tiny, Mary Dusak, Lena, and Ántonia—dancing in the dining room, and Anson Kirkpatrick coaxes them to come into the parlor and dance with the men, although Mr. Gardener feels uneasy about this irregularity. Afterward, Jim walks Ántonia back to the Harlings, and they stand talking outside the front gate until the cold chills the restlessness out of them.
