voice so high for? It don’t carry half as well.”
“I don’t see how it comes Thea is so patient with Tillie,” Mrs. Kronborg
more than once remarked to her husband. “She ain’t patient with most
people, but it seems like she’s got a peculiar patience for Tillie.”
Tillie always coaxed Thea to go “behind the scenes” with her when the
club presented a play, and help her with her make-up. Thea hated it, but
she always went. She felt as if she had to do it. There was something in
Tillie’s adoration of her that compelled her. There was no family
impropriety that Thea was so much ashamed of as Tillie’s “acting” and
yet she was always being dragged in to assist her. Tillie simply had
her, there. She didn’t know why, but it was so. There was a string in
her somewhere that Tillie could pull; a sense of obligation to Tillie’s
misguided aspirations. The saloon-keepers had some such feeling of
responsibility toward Spanish Johnny.
The dramatic club was the pride of Tillie’s heart, and her enthusiasm
was the principal factor in keeping it together. Sick or well, Tillie
always attended rehearsals, and was always urging the young people, who
took rehearsals lightly, to “stop fooling and begin now.” The young
men—bank clerks, grocery clerks, insurance agents—played tricks,
laughed at Tillie, and “put it up on each other” about seeing her home;
but they often went to tiresome rehearsals just to oblige her. They were
good-natured young fellows. Their trainer and stage-manager was young
Upping, the jeweler who ordered Thea’s music for her.
Though barely thirty, he had followed half a dozen professions, and had
once been a violinist in the orchestra of the Andrews Opera Company,
then well known in little towns throughout Colorado and Nebraska.
By one amazing indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the
Moonstone Drama Club. The club had decided to put on “The Drummer Boy of
Shiloh,” a very ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed
and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in Andersonville
Prison. The members of the club consulted together in Tillie’s absence
as to who should play the part of the drummer boy. It must be taken by a
very young person, and village boys of that age are self-conscious and
are not apt at memorizing. The part was a long one, and clearly it must
be given to a girl. Some members of the club suggested Thea Kronborg,
others advocated Lily Fisher. Lily’s partisans urged that she was much
prettier than Thea, and had a much “sweeter disposition.” Nobody denied
these facts. But there was nothing in the least boyish about Lily, and
she sang all songs and played all parts alike. Lily’s simper was
popular, but it seemed not quite the right thing for the heroic drummer
boy.
Upping, the trainer, talked to one and another: “Lily’s all right for
girl parts,” he insisted, “but you’ve got to get a girl with some ginger
in her for this. Thea’s got the voice, too. When she sings, ‘Just Before
the Battle, Mother,’ she’ll bring down the house.”
When all the members of the club had been privately consulted, they
announced their decision to Tillie at the first regular meeting that was
called to cast the parts. They expected Tillie to be overcome with joy,
but, on the contrary, she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid Thea hasn’t
got time for that,” she said jerkily. “She is always so busy with her
