Song of the Lark | Page 8

cigar boxes full of stones that she had found or traded for, and she
imagined that they were of enormous value. She was always plan- ning
how she would have them set.
"What are you reading?" The doctor reached under the covers and
pulled out a book of Byron's poems. "Do you like this?"

She looked confused, turned over a few pages rapidly, and pointed to
"My native land, good-night." "That," she said sheepishly.
"How about `Maid of Athens'?"

She blushed and looked at him suspiciously. "I like 'There was a sound
of revelry,'" she muttered.
The doctor laughed and closed the book. It was clumsily bound in
padded leather and had been presented to the Reverend Peter Kronborg
by his Sunday-School class as an ornament for his parlor table.
"Come into the office some day, and I'll lend you a nice book. You can
skip the parts you don't understand. You can read it in vacation.
Perhaps you'll be able to under- stand all of it by then."
Thea frowned and looked fretfully toward the piano. "In vacation I
have to practice four hours every day, and then there'll be Thor to take
care of." She pronounced it "Tor."
"Thor? Oh, you've named the baby Thor?" exclaimed the doctor.
Thea frowned again, still more fiercely, and said quickly, "That's a nice
name, only maybe it's a little--old- fashioned." She was very sensitive
about being thought a foreigner, and was proud of the fact that, in town,
her father always preached in English; very bookish English, at that,
one might add.
Born in an old Scandinavian colony in Minnesota, Peter Kronborg had
been sent to a small divinity school in Indiana by the women of a
Swedish evangelical mission, who were convinced of his gifts and who
skimped and begged and gave church suppers to get the long, lazy
youth through the seminary. He could still speak enough Swed- ish to
exhort and to bury the members of his country church out at Copper
Hole, and he wielded in his Moon- stone pulpit a somewhat pompous
English vocabulary he had learned out of books at college. He always

spoke of "the infant Saviour," "our Heavenly Father," etc. The poor
man had no natural, spontaneous human speech. If he had his sincere
moments, they were perforce inarticu- late. Probably a good deal of his
pretentiousness was due

to the fact that he habitually expressed himself in a book- learned
language, wholly remote from anything personal, native, or homely.
Mrs. Kronborg spoke Swedish to her own sisters and to her
sister-in-law Tillie, and colloquial English to her neighbors. Thea, who
had a rather sensitive ear, until she went to school never spoke at all,
except in monosyllables, and her mother was convinced that she was
tongue-tied. She was still inept in speech for a child so intelligent. Her
ideas were usually clear, but she seldom attempted to explain them,
even at school, where she excelled in "written work" and never did
more than mutter a reply.
"Your music professor stopped me on the street to-day and asked me
how you were," said the doctor, rising. "He'll be sick himself, trotting
around in this slush with no overcoat or overshoes."
"He's poor," said Thea simply.
The doctor sighed. "I'm afraid he's worse than that. Is he always all
right when you take your lessons? Never acts as if he'd been drinking?"
Thea looked angry and spoke excitedly. "He knows a lot. More than
anybody. I don't care if he does drink; he's old and poor." Her voice
shook a little.
Mrs. Kronborg spoke up from the next room. "He's a good teacher,
doctor. It's good for us he does drink. He'd never be in a little place like
this if he didn't have some weakness. These women that teach music
around here don't know nothing. I wouldn't have my child wasting time
with them. If Professor Wunsch goes away, Thea'll have nobody to take
from. He's careful with his scholars; he don't use bad language. Mrs.
Kohler is always present when Thea takes her lesson. It's all right." Mrs.

Kronborg spoke calmly and judicially. One could see that she had
thought the matter out before.
"I'm glad to hear that, Mrs. Kronborg. I wish we could get the old man
off his bottle and keep him tidy. Do you

suppose if I gave you an old overcoat you could get him to wear it?"
The doctor went to the bedroom door and Mrs. Kronborg looked up
from her darning.
"Why, yes, I guess he'd be glad of it. He'll take most anything from me.
He won't buy clothes, but I guess he'd wear 'em if he had 'em. I've
never had any clothes to give him, having so many to