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Ray Kennedy said he could get a pass for her. What with
the pain of the tooth, and family discussions about it, with
trying to make Christmas presents and to keep up her
school work and practicing, and giving lessons on Satur-
days, Thea was fairly worn out.
On Christmas Eve she was nervous and excited. It
was the first time she had ever played in the opera house,
and she had never before had to face so many people.
Wunsch would not let her play with her notes, and she was
afraid of forgetting. Before the concert began, all the par-
ticipants had to assemble on the stage and sit there to be
looked at. Thea wore her white summer dress and a blue
sash, but Lily Fisher had a new pink silk, trimmed with
white swansdown.
The hall was packed. It seemed as if every one in Moon-
stone was there, even Mrs. Kohler, in her hood, and old
Fritz. The seats were wooden kitchen chairs, numbered,
and nailed to long planks which held them together in
rows. As the floor was not raised, the chairs were all on the
same level. The more interested persons in the audience
peered over the heads of the people in front of them to get
a good view of the stage. From the platform Thea picked
out many friendly faces. There was Dr. Archie, who never
went to church entertainments; there was the friendly
jeweler who ordered her music for her,--he sold accor-
dions and guitars as well as watches,--and the druggist
who often lent her books, and her favorite teacher from the
school. There was Ray Kennedy, with a party of freshly
barbered railroad men he had brought along with him.
There was Mrs. Kronborg with all the children, even Thor,
who had been brought out in a new white plush coat. At
the back of the hall sat a little group of Mexicans, and
among them Thea caught the gleam of Spanish Johnny's
white teeth, and of Mrs. Tellamantez's lustrous, smoothly
coiled black hair.
After the orchestra played "Selections from Erminie,"
and the Baptist preacher made a long prayer, Tillie Kron-
borg came on with a highly colored recitation, "The Polish
Boy." When it was over every one breathed more freely.
No committee had the courage to leave Tillie off a pro-
gramme. She was accepted as a trying feature of every
entertainment. The Progressive Euchre Club was the only
social organization in the town that entirely escaped Tillie.
After Tillie sat down, the Ladies' Quartette sang, "Beloved,
it is Night," and then it was Thea's turn.
The "Ballade" took ten minutes, which was five minutes
too long. The audience grew restive and fell to whispering.
Thea could hear Mrs. Livery Johnson's bracelets jangling
as she fanned herself, and she could hear her father's nerv-
ous, ministerial cough. Thor behaved better than any
one else. When Thea bowed and returned to her seat at the
back of the stage there was the usual applause, but it was
vigorous only from the back of the house where the Mexi-
cans sat, and from Ray Kennedy's CLAQUEURS. Any one could
see that a good-natured audience had been bored.
Because Mr. Kronborg's sister was on the programme,
it had also been necessary to ask the Baptist preacher's
wife's cousin to sing. She was a "deep alto" from McCook,
and she sang, "Thy Sentinel Am I." After her came Lily
Fisher. Thea's rival was also a blonde, but her hair was
much heavier than Thea's, and fell in long round curls over
her shoulders. She was the angel-child of the Baptists, and
looked exactly like the beautiful children on soap calen-
dars. Her pink-and-white face, her set smile of innocence,
were surely born of a color-press. She had long, drooping
eyelashes, a little pursed-up mouth, and narrow, pointed
teeth, like a squirrel's.
Lily began:--
"ROCK OF AGES, CLEFT FOR ME, carelessly the maiden
sang."
Thea drew a long breath. That was the game; it was a
recitation and a song in one. Lily trailed the hymn
through half a dozen verses with great effect. The Baptist
preacher had announced at the beginning of the concert
that "owing to the length of the programme, there would
be no encores." But the applause which followed Lily to
her seat was such an unmistakable expression of enthusi-
asm that Thea had to admit Lily was justified in going
back. She was attended this time by Mrs. Livery Johnson
herself, crimson with triumph and gleaming-eyed, nerv-
ously rolling and unrolling a sheet of music. She took off
her bracelets and played Lily's accompaniment. Lily had
the effrontery to come out with, "She sang the song of
Home, Sweet Home, the song that touched my heart." But
this did not surprise Thea; as Ray said later in the evening,
"the cards had been stacked against her from the begin-
ning." The next issue of the GLEAM correctly stated that
"unquestionably the honors of the evening must be ac-
corded to Miss Lily Fisher." The Baptists had everything
their own way.
After the concert Ray Kennedy joined the Kronborgs'
party and walked home with them. Thea was grateful for
his silent sympathy, even while it irritated her. She in-
wardly 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 good-
night. They all hurried in to the glowing stove in the
parlor. The sleepy children were sent to bed. Mrs. Kron-
borg 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 usu-
ally 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 lan-
tern 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 dis-
tant 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 electri-
cian," 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, di-
rected, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley
and Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel
about it. Anna often demanded unreasonable service from
her older brothers; that they should sit up until after mid-
night to bring her home from parties when she did not like
the youth who had offered himself as her escort; or that
they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter
night, to take her to a ranch dance, after they had been
working hard all day. Gunner often got bored with his own
clothes or stilts or sled, and wanted Axel's. But Thea, from
the time she was a little thing, had her own routine. She
kept out of every one's way, and was hard to manage only
when the other children interfered with her. Then there
was trouble indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm
Mrs. Kronborg. "You ought to know enough to let Thea
alone. She lets you alone," she often said to the other
children.
One may have staunch friends in one's own family, but
one seldom has admirers. Thea, however, had one in the
person of her addle-pated aunt, Tillie Kronborg. In older
countries, where dress and opinions and manners are not
so thoroughly standardized as in our own West, there is a
belief that people who are foolish about the more obvious
things of life are apt to have peculiar insight into what lies
beyond the obvious. The old woman who can never learn
not to put the kerosene can on the stove, may yet be able
to tell fortunes, to persuade a backward child to grow, to
cure warts, or to tell people what to do with a young girl
who has gone melancholy. Tillie's mind was a curious
machine; when she was awake it went round like a wheel
when the belt has slipped off, and when she was asleep
she dreamed follies. But she had intuitions. She knew,
for instance, that Thea was different from the other Kron-
borgs, worthy though they all were. Her romantic im-
agination found possibilities in her niece. When she was
sweeping or ironing, or turning the ice-cream freezer at a
furious rate, she often built up brilliant futures for Thea,
adapting freely the latest novel she had read.
Tillie made enemies for her niece among the church
people because, at sewing societies and church suppers, she
sometimes spoke vauntingly, with a toss of her head, just
as if Thea's "wonderfulness" were an accepted fact in
Moonstone, like Mrs. Archie's stinginess, or Mrs. Livery
Johnson's duplicity. People declared that, on this subject,
Tillie made them tired.
Tillie belonged t...
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