irritated her. She inwardly vowed that she would never take another
lesson from old Wunsch. She wished that her father would not keep
cheerfully singing, “When Shepherds Watched,” as he marched ahead,
carrying Thor. She felt that silence would become the Kronborgs for a
while. As a family, they somehow seemed a little ridiculous, trooping
along in the starlight. There were so many of them, for one thing. Then
Tillie was so absurd. She was giggling and talking to Anna just as if
she had not made, as even Mrs. Kronborg admitted, an exhibition of
herself.
When they got home, Ray took a box from his overcoat pocket and slipped
it into Thea’s hand as he said goodnight. They all hurried in to the
glowing stove in the parlor. The sleepy children were sent to bed. Mrs.
Kronborg and Anna stayed up to fill the stockings.
“I guess you’re tired, Thea. You needn’t stay up.” Mrs. Kronborg’s clear
and seemingly indifferent eye usually measured Thea pretty accurately.
Thea hesitated. She glanced at the presents laid out on the dining-room
table, but they looked unattractive. Even the brown plush monkey she had
bought for Thor with such enthusiasm seemed to have lost his wise and
humorous expression. She murmured, “All right,” to her mother, lit her
lantern, and went upstairs.
Ray’s box contained a hand-painted white satin fan, with pond lilies—an
unfortunate reminder. Thea smiled grimly and tossed it into her upper
drawer. She was not to be consoled by toys. She undressed quickly and
stood for some time in the cold, frowning in the broken looking glass at
her flaxen pig-tails, at her white neck and arms. Her own broad,
resolute face set its chin at her, her eyes flashed into her own
defiantly. Lily Fisher was pretty, and she was willing to be just as big
a fool as people wanted her to be. Very well; Thea Kronborg wasn’t. She
would rather be hated than be stupid, any day. She popped into bed and
read stubbornly at a queer paper book the drug-store man had given her
because he couldn’t sell it. She had trained herself to put her mind on
what she was doing, otherwise she would have come to grief with her
complicated daily schedule. She read, as intently as if she had not been
flushed with anger, the strange “Musical Memories” of the Reverend H. R.
Haweis. At last she blew out the lantern and went to sleep. She had many
curious dreams that night. In one of them Mrs. Tellamantez held her
shell to Thea’s ear, and she heard the roaring, as before, and distant
voices calling, “Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!”
IX
Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his
children remarkable. If one of the business men downtown remarked to him
that he “had a mighty bright little girl, there,” he admitted it, and at
once began to explain what a “long head for business” his son Gus had,
or that Charley was “a natural electrician,” and had put in a telephone
from the house to the preacher’s study behind the church.
Mrs. Kronborg watched her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more
interesting than her other children, and she took her more seriously,
without thinking much about why she did so. The other children had to be
guided, directed, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley and
Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel about it. Anna
