“I’ll have Larry bring the coat around to-night. You aren’t cross with
me, Thea?” taking her hand.
Thea grinned warmly. “Not if you give Professor Wunsch a coat—and
things,” she tapped the grapes significantly. The doctor bent over and
kissed her.
III
Being sick was all very well, but Thea knew from experience that
starting back to school again was attended by depressing difficulties.
One Monday morning she got up early with Axel and Gunner, who shared her
wing room, and hurried into the back living-room, between the
dining-room and the kitchen. There, beside a soft-coal stove, the
younger children of the family undressed at night and dressed in the
morning. The older daughter, Anna, and the two big boys slept upstairs,
where the rooms were theoretically warmed by stovepipes from below. The
first (and the worst!) thing that confronted Thea was a suit of clean,
prickly red flannel, fresh from the wash. Usually the torment of
breaking in a clean suit of flannel came on Sunday, but yesterday, as
she was staying in the house, she had begged off. Their winter underwear
was a trial to all the children, but it was bitterest to Thea because
she happened to have the most sensitive skin. While she was tugging it
on, her Aunt Tillie brought in warm water from the boiler and filled the
tin pitcher. Thea washed her face, brushed and braided her hair, and got
into her blue cashmere dress. Over this she buttoned a long apron, with
sleeves, which would not be removed until she put on her cloak to go to
school. Gunner and Axel, on the soap box behind the stove, had their
usual quarrel about which should wear the tightest stockings, but they
exchanged reproaches in low tones, for they were wholesomely afraid of
Mrs. Kronborg’s rawhide whip. She did not chastise her children often,
but she did it thoroughly. Only a somewhat stern system of discipline
could have kept any degree of order and quiet in that overcrowded house.
Mrs. Kronborg’s children were all trained to dress themselves at the
earliest possible age, to make their own beds,—the boys as well as the
girls,—to take care of their clothes, to eat what was given them, and
to keep out of the way. Mrs. Kronborg would have made a good chess
player; she had a head for moves and positions.
Anna, the elder daughter, was her mother’s lieutenant. All the children
knew that they must obey Anna, who was an obstinate contender for
proprieties and not always fair minded. To see the young Kronborgs
headed for Sunday School was like watching a military drill. Mrs.
Kronborg let her children’s minds alone. She did not pry into their
thoughts or nag them. She respected them as individuals, and outside of
the house they had a great deal of liberty. But their communal life was
definitely ordered.
In the winter the children breakfasted in the kitchen; Gus and Charley
and Anna first, while the younger children were dressing. Gus was
nineteen and was a clerk in a dry-goods store. Charley, eighteen months
younger, worked in a feed store. They left the house by the kitchen door
at seven o’clock, and then Anna helped her Aunt Tillie get the breakfast
for the younger ones. Without the help of this sister-in-law, Tillie
Kronborg, Mrs. Kronborg’s life would have been a hard one. Mrs. Kronborg
