shoes, and usually wore the cast-offs of one of her sons. She had never
learned much English, and her plants and shrubs were her companions. She
lived for her men and her garden. Beside that sand gulch, she had tried
to reproduce a bit of her own village in the Rhine Valley. She hid
herself behind the growth she had fostered, lived under the shade of
what she had planted and watered and pruned. In the blaze of the open
plain she was stupid and blind like an owl. Shade, shade; that was what
she was always planning and making. Behind the high tamarisk hedge, her
garden was a jungle of verdure in summer. Above the cherry trees and
peach trees and golden plums stood the windmill, with its tank on
stilts, which kept all this verdure alive. Outside, the sage-brush grew
up to the very edge of the garden, and the sand was always drifting up
to the tamarisks.
Every one in Moonstone was astonished when the Kohlers took the
wandering music-teacher to live with them. In seventeen years old Fritz
had never had a crony, except the harness-maker and Spanish Johnny. This
Wunsch came from God knew where,—followed Spanish Johnny into town when
that wanderer came back from one of his tramps. Wunsch played in the
dance orchestra, tuned pianos, and gave lessons. When Mrs. Kohler
rescued him, he was sleeping in a dirty, unfurnished room over one of
the saloons, and he had only two shirts in the world. Once he was under
her roof, the old woman went at him as she did at her garden. She sewed
and washed and mended for him, and made him so clean and respectable
that he was able to get a large class of pupils and to rent a piano. As
soon as he had money ahead, he sent to the Narrow Gauge lodging-house,
in Denver, for a trunkful of music which had been held there for unpaid
board. With tears in his eyes the old man—he was not over fifty, but
sadly battered—told Mrs. Kohler that he asked nothing better of God
than to end his days with her, and to be buried in the garden, under her
linden trees. They were not American basswood, but the European linden,
which has honey-colored blooms in summer, with a fragrance that
surpasses all trees and flowers and drives young people wild with joy.
Thea was reflecting as she walked along that had it not been for
Professor Wunsch she might have lived on for years in Moonstone without
ever knowing the Kohlers, without ever seeing their garden or the inside
of their house. Besides the cuckoo clock,—which was wonderful enough,
and which Mrs. Kohler said she kept for “company when she was
lonesome,”—the Kohlers had in their house the most wonderful thing Thea
had ever seen—but of that later.
Professor Wunsch went to the houses of his other pupils to give them
their lessons, but one morning he told Mrs. Kronborg that Thea had
talent, and that if she came to him he could teach her in his slippers,
and that would be better. Mrs. Kronborg was a strange woman. That word
“talent,” which no one else in Moonstone, not even Dr. Archie, would
have understood, she comprehended perfectly. To any other woman there,
it would have meant that a child must have her hair curled every day and
must play in public. Mrs. Kronborg knew it meant that Thea must practice
four hours a day. A child with talent must be kept at the piano, just as
a child with measles must be kept under the blankets. Mrs. Kronborg and
