In June, four Italians—the Vannis—arrive in town and set up a dancing pavilion. Dancing becomes the trend this summer, just as roller skating was the trend last summer. Parents send their children to take dancing lessons from the Vannis. On Saturday evenings, the local boys go to the dance pavilion, risking “a tiff with their sweethearts and general condemnation for a waltz with ‘the hired girls.’”
Jim explains that the foreign girls from the country are hired out in town so that they can give financial help to their large families on the farm. Because the daughters of Black Hawk townspeople are not used to doing physical labor, they have “a confident, unenquiring belief that they [are] ‘refined,’ and that the country girls, who ‘worked out,’ [are] not.” Jim remembers the foreign girls having a zest for life that made them attractive to the local boys, but like Sylvester Lovett, who is infatuated with Lena Lingard, the boys who live in town don’t have the courage to marry the hired girls. This flaw outrages Jim.
Ántonia becomes extremely popular with the town boys at the Vannis’ tent, and her social life soon begins to interfere with her domestic work at the Harlings’. One night, Harry Paine, who is engaged to be married in two days, walks her home. When he tries to kiss her, she slaps him. Mr. Harling hears the commotion and gives Ántonia an ultimatum: Either she must quit going to the dances or else she will have to find another position. She decides to go to work for the Cutters, even though Mrs. Harling warns her that it will be her ruin.
