After Jim completes his degree at Harvard, he returns to Black Hawk for his summer vacation prior to entering law school. When he arrives home, his grandparents and the Harlings greet him and, at first, it seems as if nothing has changed. The subject of Ántonia, however, is avoided. When Jim walks the now-married Frances Harling home, she refers to “poor Ántonia.” Jim’s grandmother had written to him that Ántonia had left to marry Larry Donovan, but that Donovan had abandoned her and their baby. Frances tells Jim that Donovan never married Ántonia, so she returned to live on the Shimerdas’ farm, working for her brother and almost never coming to town. Bitterly disappointed, Jim tries to forget Ántonia; He cannot “forgive her for becoming an object of pity” (298) while Lena was now Lincoln’s leading dressmaker.

Jim also hears about Tiny. Tiny traveled west to run a sailors’ lodging house in Seattle. Although the townspeople criticize Tiny, she achieves “the most solid worldly success” (299) of the young people who grew up together in Black Hawk. Jim had not known Tiny as well as he knew Ántonia and Lena. When he later encounters Tiny in Salt Lake City in 1908, he learns that she had set out for Alaska when gold was discovered there.