It takes Jim two years to finish his pre-law studies at Harvard. During a brief visit back to Black Hawk, he finds the town buzzing with gossip. Ántonia went to Denver with Larry Donovan, who jilted her, and she returned home unmarried and pregnant with his child. Now back on the farm, she has become Ambrosch’s drudge.
Tiny Soderball went to Seattle and opened a hotel for sailors, which will be the ruin of her, the townspeople say; Jim gives us a glimpse into the future: Tiny will go to Alaska when gold is discovered and open a hotel; a dying Swedish prospector whom she cares for will deed her his claim, and she will become wealthy. Later, Tiny will persuade Lena to open a dressmaking shop in San Francisco.
When Jim stops in the photographer’s shop to arrange sittings for his grandparents, he sees a photo of Ántonia’s baby in a large gilt frame. He feels a compulsion to talk to his old friend. When he asks Mrs. Harling what happened to Ántonia, she suggests that he visit the Widow Steavens, who is closest to Ántonia and will know better than anyone else.
In early August, Jim visits the Widow Steavens, who tells him Ántonia’s story. Larry Donovan wrote Ántonia that his railroad run had been changed and they would have to live in Denver. Ambrosch took her to the station and gave her $300, wages she’d earned while she had been hired out. In Denver, Ántonia cared for Donovan when he was ill, then he deserted her when her money was gone. She learned that he’d been fired and had not even tried to find another job. She returned to the Shimerda farm, where she bore her baby alone in her room. The Widow Steavens wishes Ántonia could marry and raise a family, but can see little hope for that now.
The next afternoon, Jim walks over to the Shimerda farm, where he sees Ántonia’s baby. Later, he and Ántonia visit beside Mr. Shimerda’s grave, feeling that it’s the fittest place to talk to each other. He tells her that he plans to join a law firm owned by a relative of his mother’s in New York City. Ántonia says she couldn’t live in a city. “I like to be where I know every stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly,” she says. She tells him that even if he never comes back, he will always be with her in memory, and she will tell her daughter about all they did together. Her father, she says, has “been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else.” As they part at twilight, Jim feels the earth pulling at him; he wishes he could be a little boy again and stay here. As he walks back to the Widow Steavens’ farm, he feels that a little boy and girl are running beside him, “laughing and whispering to each other in the grass.”
