often reminded Anna that “no hired help would ever have taken the same
interest.”
Mr. Kronborg came of a poorer stock than his wife; from a lowly,
ignorant family that had lived in a poor part of Sweden. His
great-grandfather had gone to Norway to work as a farm laborer and had
married a Norwegian girl. This strain of Norwegian blood came out
somewhere in each generation of the Kronborgs. The intemperance of one
of Peter Kronborg’s uncles, and the religious mania of another, had been
alike charged to the Norwegian grandmother. Both Peter Kronborg and his
sister Tillie were more like the Norwegian root of the family than like
the Swedish, and this same Norwegian strain was strong in Thea, though
in her it took a very different character.
Tillie was a queer, addle-pated thing, as flighty as a girl at
thirty-five, and overweeningly fond of gay clothes—which taste, as Mrs.
Kronborg philosophically said, did nobody any harm. Tillie was always
cheerful, and her tongue was still for scarcely a minute during the day.
She had been cruelly overworked on her father’s Minnesota farm when she
was a young girl, and she had never been so happy as she was now; had
never before, as she said, had such social advantages. She thought her
brother the most important man in Moonstone. She never missed a church
service, and, much to the embarrassment of the children, she always
“spoke a piece” at the Sunday-School concerts. She had a complete set of
“Standard Recitations,” which she conned on Sundays. This morning, when
Thea and her two younger brothers sat down to breakfast, Tillie was
remonstrating with Gunner because he had not learned a recitation
assigned to him for George Washington Day at school. The unmemorized
text lay heavily on Gunner’s conscience as he attacked his buckwheat
cakes and sausage. He knew that Tillie was in the right, and that “when
the day came he would be ashamed of himself.”
“I don’t care,” he muttered, stirring his coffee; “they oughtn’t to make
boys speak. It’s all right for girls. They like to show off.”
“No showing off about it. Boys ought to like to speak up for their
country. And what was the use of your father buying you a new suit, if
you’re not going to take part in anything?”
“That was for Sunday-School. I’d rather wear my old one, anyhow. Why
didn’t they give the piece to Thea?” Gunner grumbled.
Tillie was turning buckwheat cakes at the griddle. “Thea can play and
sing, she don’t need to speak. But you’ve got to know how to do
something, Gunner, that you have. What are you going to do when you git
big and want to git into society, if you can’t do nothing? Everybody’ll
say, ‘Can you sing? Can you play? Can you speak? Then git right out of
society.’ An’ that’s what they’ll say to you, Mr. Gunner.”
Gunner and Alex grinned at Anna, who was preparing her mother’s
breakfast. They never made fun of Tillie, but they understood well
enough that there were subjects upon which her ideas were rather
foolish. When Tillie struck the shallows, Thea was usually prompt in
turning the conversation.
“Will you and Axel let me have your sled at recess?” she asked.
“All the time?” asked Gunner dubiously.
