More than that, Belle seemed to have got herself off her hands. Her
reputed prettiness must have been entirely the result of determination,
of a fierce little ambition. Once she had married, fastened herself on
some one, come to port,—it vanished like the ornamental plumage which
drops away from some birds after the mating season. The one aggressive
action of her life was over. She began to shrink in face and stature. Of
her harum-scarum spirit there was nothing left but the little screech.
Within a few years she looked as small and mean as she was.
Thor’s chariot crept along. Thea approached the house unwillingly. She
didn’t care about the strawberries, anyhow. She had come only because
she did not want to hurt Dr. Archie’s feelings. She not only disliked
Mrs. Archie, she was a little afraid of her. While Thea was getting the
heavy baby-buggy through the iron gate she heard some one call, “Wait a
minute!” and Mrs. Archie came running around the house from the back
door, her apron over her head. She came to help with the buggy, because
she was afraid the wheels might scratch the paint off the gateposts. She
was a skinny little woman with a great pile of frizzy light hair on a
small head.
“Dr. Archie told me to come up and pick some strawberries,” Thea
muttered, wishing she had stayed at home.
Mrs. Archie led the way to the back door, squinting and shading her eyes
with her hand. “Wait a minute,” she said again, when Thea explained why
she had come.
She went into her kitchen and Thea sat down on the porch step. When Mrs.
Archie reappeared she carried in her hand a little wooden butter-basket
trimmed with fringed tissue paper, which she must have brought home from
some church supper. “You’ll have to have something to put them in,” she
said, ignoring the yawning willow basket which stood empty on Thor’s
feet. “You can have this, and you needn’t mind about returning it. You
know about not trampling the vines, don’t you?”
Mrs. Archie went back into the house and Thea leaned over in the sand
and picked a few strawberries. As soon as she was sure that she was not
going to cry, she tossed the little basket into the big one and ran
Thor’s buggy along the gravel walk and out of the gate as fast as she
could push it. She was angry, and she was ashamed for Dr. Archie. She
could not help thinking how uncomfortable he would be if he ever found
out about it. Little things like that were the ones that cut him most.
She slunk home by the back way, and again almost cried when she told her
mother about it.
Mrs. Kronborg was frying doughnuts for her husband’s supper. She laughed
as she dropped a new lot into the hot grease. “It’s wonderful, the way
some people are made,” she declared. “But I wouldn’t let that upset me
if I was you. Think what it would be to live with it all the time. You
look in the black pocketbook inside my handbag and take a dime and go
downtown and get an ice-cream soda. That’ll make you feel better. Thor
can have a little of the ice-cream if you feed it to him with a spoon.
He likes it, don’t you, son?” She stooped to wipe his chin. Thor was
only six months old and inarticulate, but it was quite true that he
liked ice-cream.
VI
