houses were little story-and-a-half cottages, with none of the fussy
architectural efforts that marked those on Sylvester Street. They
nestled modestly behind their cottonwoods and Virginia creeper; their
occupants had no social pretensions to keep up. There were no half-glass
front doors with doorbells, or formidable parlors behind closed
shutters. Here the old women washed in the back yard, and the men sat in
the front doorway and smoked their pipes. The people on Sylvester Street
scarcely knew that this part of the town existed. Thea liked to take
Thor and her express wagon and explore these quiet, shady streets, where
the people never tried to have lawns or to grow elms and pine trees, but
let the native timber have its way and spread in luxuriance. She had
many friends there, old women who gave her a yellow rose or a spray of
trumpet vine and appeased Thor with a cooky or a doughnut. They called
Thea “that preacher’s girl,” but the demonstrative was misplaced, for
when they spoke of Mr. Kronborg they called him “the Methodist
preacher.”
Dr. Archie was very proud of his yard and garden, which he worked
himself. He was the only man in Moonstone who was successful at growing
rambler roses, and his strawberries were famous. One morning when Thea
was downtown on an errand, the doctor stopped her, took her hand and
went over her with a quizzical eye, as he nearly always did when they
met.
“You haven’t been up to my place to get any strawberries yet, Thea.
They’re at their best just now. Mrs. Archie doesn’t know what to do with
them all. Come up this afternoon. Just tell Mrs. Archie I sent you.
Bring a big basket and pick till you are tired.”
When she got home Thea told her mother that she didn’t want to go,
because she didn’t like Mrs. Archie.
“She is certainly one queer woman,” Mrs. Kronborg assented, “but he’s
asked you so often, I guess you’ll have to go this time. She won’t bite
you.”
After dinner Thea took a basket, put Thor in his baby buggy, and set out
for Dr. Archie’s house at the other end of town. As soon as she came
within sight of the house, she slackened her pace. She approached it
very slowly, stopping often to pick dandelions and sand-peas for Thor to
crush up in his fist.
It was his wife’s custom, as soon as Dr. Archie left the house in the
morning, to shut all the doors and windows to keep the dust out, and to
pull down the shades to keep the sun from fading the carpets. She
thought, too, that neighbors were less likely to drop in if the house
was closed up. She was one of those people who are stingy without motive
or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She must have known
that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more extravagant than
he would have been had she made him comfortable. He never came home for
lunch, because she gave him such miserable scraps and shreds of food. No
matter how much milk he bought, he could never get thick cream for his
strawberries. Even when he watched his wife lift it from the milk in
smooth, ivory-colored blankets, she managed, by some sleight-of-hand, to
dilute it before it got to the breakfast table. The butcher’s favorite
joke was about the kind of meat he sold Mrs. Archie. She felt no
