Neighbour Rosicky

In an office in rural Nebraska, Doctor Burleigh diagnoses Anton Rosicky with heart failure. Rosicky is a sixty-five-year-old Czech immigrant with a good-natured disposition, and he reacts calmly and even amusedly to the news. Although he reluctantly agrees to leave the heavy labor to his five sons, he stubbornly refuses to give up his coffee.

The two men chat pleasantly for a while. Doctor Burleigh is troubled, because he is very fond of Rosicky. He begins to think about an incident the previous winter, when he had come straight to the Rosickys after delivering a neighbor's baby. In contrast to their wealthy but overworked neighbors, the Rosickys had provided him with a hearty breakfast; for Mary, Anton Rosicky's wife, "It was a rare pleasure to feed a young man whom she seldom saw and of whom she was as proud as if he belonged to her" (Part I, Paragraph 26). He spent a pleasant meal talking with the Rosickys and left wondering why the family never seemed to thrive financially, ultimately concluding that it might not be possible to "enjoy your life and put it into the bank, too" (Part I, Paragraph 44).

Back in the present, Rosicky leaves Doctor Burleigh and stops at a store to pick up some fabric for his wife, bantering with the shopgirl, Pearl, as he does so.