parental sentiment there was in the house, to remember birthdays and
anniversaries, to point the children to moral and patriotic ideals. It
was her work to keep their bodies, their clothes, and their conduct in
some sort of order, and this she accomplished with a success that was a
source of wonder to her neighbors. As she used to remark, and her
husband admiringly to echo, she “had never lost one.” With all his
flightiness, Peter Kronborg appreciated the matter-of-fact, punctual way
in which his wife got her children into the world and along in it. He
believed, and he was right in believing, that the sovereign State of
Colorado was much indebted to Mrs. Kronborg and women like her.
Mrs. Kronborg believed that the size of every family was decided in
heaven. More modern views would not have startled her; they would simply
have seemed foolish—thin chatter, like the boasts of the men who built
the tower of Babel, or like Axel’s plan to breed ostriches in the
chicken yard. From what evidence Mrs. Kronborg formed her opinions on
this and other matters, it would have been difficult to say, but once
formed, they were unchangeable. She would no more have questioned her
convictions than she would have questioned revelation. Calm and even
tempered, naturally kind, she was capable of strong prejudices, and she
never forgave.
When the doctor came in to see Thea, Mrs. Kronborg was reflecting that
the washing was a week behind, and deciding what she had better do about
it. The arrival of a new baby meant a revision of her entire domestic
schedule, and as she drove her needle along she had been working out new
sleeping arrangements and cleaning days. The doctor had entered the
house without knocking, after making noise enough in the hall to prepare
his patients. Thea was reading, her book propped up before her in the
sunlight.
“Mustn’t do that; bad for your eyes,” he said, as Thea shut the book
quickly and slipped it under the covers.
Mrs. Kronborg called from her bed: “Bring the baby here, doctor, and
have that chair. She wanted him in there for company.”
Before the doctor picked up the baby, he put a yellow paper bag down on
Thea’s coverlid and winked at her. They had a code of winks and
grimaces. When he went in to chat with her mother, Thea opened the bag
cautiously, trying to keep it from crackling. She drew out a long bunch
of white grapes, with a little of the sawdust in which they had been
packed still clinging to them. They were called Malaga grapes in
Moonstone, and once or twice during the winter the leading grocer got a
keg of them. They were used mainly for table decoration, about
Christmas-time. Thea had never had more than one grape at a time before.
When the doctor came back she was holding the almost transparent fruit
up in the sunlight, feeling the pale-green skins softly with the tips of
her fingers. She did not thank him; she only snapped her eyes at him in
a special way which he understood, and, when he gave her his hand, put
it quickly and shyly under her cheek, as if she were trying to do so
without knowing it—and without his knowing it.
Dr. Archie sat down in the rocking-chair. “And how’s Thea feeling
to-day?”
