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He said Chicago, repeatedly. Under the circumstances, it
seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes ex-
actly, if Thea is willing."
"Certainly, certainly. Thea is conscientious. She would
not waste her opportunities." Mr. Kronborg paused. "If
Thea were your own daughter, doctor, would you consent
to such a plan, at her present age?"
"I most certainly should. In fact, if she were my
daughter, I'd have sent her away before this. She's a
most unusual child, and she's only wasting herself here.
At her age she ought to be learning, not teaching. She'll
never learn so quickly and easily as she will right now."
"Well, doctor, you had better talk it over with Mrs.
Kronborg. I make it a point to defer to her wishes in such
matters. She understands all her children perfectly. I
may say that she has all a mother's insight, and more."
Dr. Archie smiled. "Yes, and then some. I feel quite
confident about Mrs. Kronborg. We usually agree. Good-
morning."
Dr. Archie stepped out into the hot sunshine and walked
rapidly toward his office, with a determined look on his face.
He found his waiting-room full of patients, and it was one
o'clock before he had dismissed the last one. Then he shut
his door and took a drink before going over to the hotel for
his lunch. He smiled as he locked his cupboard. "I feel
almost as gay as if I were going to get away for a winter
myself," he thought.
Afterward Thea could never remember much about
that summer, or how she lived through her impatience.
She was to set off with Dr. Archie on the fifteenth of Octo-
ber, and she gave lessons until the first of September. Then
she began to get her clothes ready, and spent whole after-
noons in the village dressmaker's stuffy, littered little sew-
ing-room. Thea and her mother made a trip to Denver to
buy the materials for her dresses. Ready-made clothes for
girls were not to be had in those days. Miss Spencer, the
dressmaker, declared that she could do handsomely by Thea
if they would only let her carry out her own ideas. But Mrs.
Kronborg and Thea felt that Miss Spencer's most daring
productions might seem out of place in Chicago, so they
restrained her with a firm hand. Tillie, who always helped
Mrs. Kronborg with the family sewing, was for letting
Miss Spencer challenge Chicago on Thea's person. Since
Ray Kennedy's death, Thea had become more than ever
one of Tillie's heroines. Tillie swore each of her friends to
secrecy, and, coming home from church or leaning over the
fence, told them the most touching stories about Ray's
devotion, and how Thea would "never get over it."
Tillie's confidences stimulated the general discussion of
Thea's venture. This discussion went on, upon front
porches and in back yards, pretty much all summer. Some
people approved of Thea's going to Chicago, but most peo-
ple did not. There were others who changed their minds
about it every day.
Tillie said she wanted Thea to have a ball dress "above
all things." She bought a fashion book especially devoted
to evening clothes and looked hungrily over the colored
plates, picking out costumes that would be becoming to
"a blonde." She wanted Thea to have all the gay clothes
she herself had always longed for; clothes she often told
herself she needed "to recite in."
"Tillie," Thea used to cry impatiently, "can't you see
that if Miss Spencer tried to make one of those things,
she'd make me look like a circus girl? Anyhow, I don't
know anybody in Chicago. I won't be going to parties."
Tillie always replied with a knowing toss of her head,
"You see! You'll be in society before you know it. There
ain't many girls as accomplished as you."
On the morning of the fifteenth of October the Kronborg
family, all of them but Gus, who couldn't leave the store,
started for the station an hour before train time. Charley
had taken Thea's trunk and telescope to the depot in his
delivery wagon early that morning. Thea wore her new
blue serge traveling-dress, chosen for its serviceable quali-
ties. She had done her hair up carefully, and had put a
pale-blue ribbon around her throat, under a little lace col-
lar that Mrs. Kohler had crocheted for her. As they went
out of the gate, Mrs. Kronborg looked her over thought-
fully. Yes, that blue ribbon went very well with the dress,
and with Thea's eyes. Thea had a rather unusual touch
about such things, she reflected comfortably. Tillie al-
ways said that Thea was "so indifferent to dress," but her
mother noticed that she usually put her clothes on well.
She felt the more at ease about letting Thea go away from
home, because she had good sense about her clothes and
never tried to dress up too much. Her coloring was so
individual, she was so unusually fair, that in the wrong
clothes she might easily have been "conspicuous."
It was a fine morning, and the family set out from the
house in good spirits. Thea was quiet and calm. She had
forgotten nothing, and she clung tightly to her handbag,
which held her trunk-key and all of her money that was
not in an envelope pinned to her chemise. Thea walked
behind the others, holding Thor by the hand, and this time
she did not feel that the procession was too long. Thor
was uncommunicative that morning, and would only talk
about how he would rather get a sand bur in his toe every
day than wear shoes and stockings. As they passed the
cottonwood grove where Thea often used to bring him in
his cart, she asked him who would take him for nice long
walks after sister went away.
"Oh, I can walk in our yard," he replied unapprecia-
tively. "I guess I can make a pond for my duck."
Thea leaned down and looked into his face. "But you
won't forget about sister, will you?" Thor shook his head.
"And won't you be glad when sister comes back and can
take you over to Mrs. Kohler's to see the pigeons?"
"Yes, I'll be glad. But I'm going to have a pigeon my
own self."
"But you haven't got any little house for one. Maybe
Axel would make you a little house."
"Oh, her can live in the barn, her can," Thor drawled
indifferently.
Thea laughed and squeezed his hand. She always liked
his sturdy matter-of-factness. Boys ought to be like that,
she thought.
When they reached the depot, Mr. Kronborg paced the
platform somewhat ceremoniously with his daughter. Any
member of his flock would have gathered that he was giv-
ing her good counsel about meeting the temptations of the
world. He did, indeed, begin to admonish her not to forget
that talents come from our Heavenly Father and are to be
used for his glory, but he cut his remarks short and looked
at his watch. He believed that Thea was a religious girl,
but when she looked at him with that intent, that pas-
sionately inquiring gaze which used to move even Wunsch,
Mr. Kronborg suddenly felt his eloquence fail. Thea was
like her mother, he reflected; you couldn't put much
sentiment across with her. As a usual thing, he liked girls
to be a little more responsive. He liked them to blush at
his compliments; as Mrs. Kronborg candidly said, "Father
could be very soft with the girls." But this morning he was
thinking that hard-headedness was a reassuring quality in
a daughter who was going to Chicago alone.
Mr. Kronborg believed that big cities were places where
people went to lose their identity and to be wicked. He
himself, when he was a student at the Seminary--he
coughed and opened his watch again. He knew, of course,
that a great deal of business went on in Chicago, that there
was an active Board of Trade, and that hogs and cattle
were slaughtered there. But when, as a young man, he had
stopped over in Chicago, he had not interested himself in
the commercial activities of the city. He remembered it as
a place full of cheap shows and dance halls and boys from
the country who were behaving disgustingly.
Dr. Archie drove up to the station about ten minutes
before the train was due. His man tied the ponies and stood
holding the doctor's alligator-skin bag--very elegant,
Thea thought it. Mrs. Kronborg did not burden the doctor
with warnings and cautions. She said again that she hoped
he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay, where they
had good beds, and she hoped the landlady would be a
woman who'd had children of her own. "I don't go much
on old maids looking after girls," she remarked as she took
a pin out of her own hat and thrust it into Thea's blue
turban. "You'll be sure to lose your hatpins on the train,
Thea. It's better to have an extra one in case." She tucked
in a little curl that had escaped from Thea's careful twist.
"Don't forget to brush your dress often, and pin it up to
the curtains of your berth to-night, so it won't wrinkle.
If you get it wet, have a tailor press it before it draws."
She turned Thea about by the shoulders and looked her
over a last time. Yes, she looked very well. She wasn't
pretty, exactly,--her face was too broad and her nose was
too big. But she had that lovely skin, and she looked fresh
and sweet. She had always been a sweet-smelling child.
Her mother had always liked to kiss her, when she hap-
pened to think of it.
The train whistled in, and Mr. Kronborg carried the
canvas "telescope" into the car. Thea kissed them all
good-bye. Tillie cried, but she was the only one who did.
They all shouted things up at the closed window of the Pull-
man car, from which Thea looked down at them as from
a frame, her face glowing with excitement, her turban a
little tilted in spite of three hatpins. She had already taken
off her new gloves to save them. Mrs. Kronborg reflected
that she would never see just that same picture again,
and as Thea's car slid off along the rails, she wiped a
tear from her eye. "She won't come back a little girl,"
Mrs. Kronborg said to her husband as they turned to go
home. "Anyhow, she's been a sweet one."
While the Kronborg family were trooping slowly home-
ward, Thea was sitting in the Pullman, her telescope in the
seat beside her, her handbag tightly gripped in her fingers.
Dr. Archie had gone into the smoker. He thought she
might be a little tearful, and that it would be kinder to
leave her alone for a while. Her eyes did fill once, when
she saw the last of the sand hills and realized that she was
going to leave them behind for a long while. They always
made her think of Ray, too. She had had such good times
with him out there.
But, of c...
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