Song of the Lark | Page 9

make over for."
"I'll have Larry bring the coat around to-night. You aren't cross with me,
Thea?" taking her hand.
Thea grinned warmly. "Not if you give Professor Wunsch a coat--and
things," she tapped the grapes sig- nificantly. The doctor bent over and
kissed her.

III
Being sick was all very well, but Thea knew from experience that
starting back to school again was attended by depressing difficulties.
One Monday morning she got up early with Axel and Gunner, who
shared her wing room, and hurried into the back living-room, between
the dining-room and the kitchen. There, beside a soft-coal stove, the
younger children of the family undressed at night and dressed in the
morning. The older daughter, Anna, and the two big boys slept upstairs,
where the rooms were theoretically warmed by stovepipes from below.
The first (and the worst!) thing that confronted Thea was a suit of clean,
prickly red flannel, fresh from the wash. Usually the torment of
breaking in a clean suit of flannel came on Sunday, but yesterday, as
she was staying in the house, she had begged off. Their winter

underwear was a trial to all the children, but it was bitterest to Thea
because she happened to have the most sensitive skin. While she was
tugging it on, her Aunt Tillie brought in warm water from the boiler
and filled the tin pitcher. Thea washed her face, brushed and braided
her hair, and got into her blue cash- mere dress. Over this she buttoned
a long apron, with sleeves, which would not be removed until she put
on her cloak to go to school. Gunner and Axel, on the soap box behind
the stove, had their usual quarrel about which should wear the tightest
stockings, but they exchanged reproaches in low tones, for they were
wholesomely afraid of Mrs. Kronborg's rawhide whip. She did not
chastise her children often, but she did it thoroughly. Only a some-
what stern system of discipline could have kept any degree of order and
quiet in that overcrowded house.
Mrs. Kronborg's children were all trained to dress them-

selves at the earliest possible age, to make their own beds, --the boys as
well as the girls,--to take care of their clothes, to eat what was given
them, and to keep out of the way. Mrs. Kronborg would have made a
good chess- player; she had a head for moves and positions.
Anna, the elder daughter, was her mother's lieutenant. All the children
knew that they must obey Anna, who was an obstinate contender for
proprieties and not always fair- minded. To see the young Kronborgs
headed for Sunday- School was like watching a military drill. Mrs.
Kronborg let her children's minds alone. She did not pry into their
thoughts or nag them. She respected them as individuals, and outside of
the house they had a great deal of liberty. But their communal life was
definitely ordered.
In the winter the children breakfasted in the kitchen; Gus and Charley
and Anna first, while the younger chil- dren were dressing. Gus was
nineteen and was a clerk in a dry-goods store. Charley, eighteen months
younger, worked in a feed store. They left the house by the kitchen
door at seven o'clock, and then Anna helped her Aunt Tillie get the
breakfast for the younger ones. Without the help of this sister-in-law,

Tillie Kronborg, Mrs. Kronborg's life would have been a hard one. Mrs.
Kronborg often reminded Anna that "no hired help would ever have
taken the same interest."
Mr. Kronborg came of a poorer stock than his wife; from a lowly,
ignorant family that had lived in a poor part of Sweden. His
great-grandfather had gone to Norway to work as a farm laborer and
had married a Norwegian girl. This strain of Norwegian blood came out
somewhere in each generation of the Kronborgs. The intemperance of
one of Peter Kronborg's uncles, and the religious mania of another, had
been alike charged to the Norwegian grandmother. Both Peter
Kronborg and his sister Tillie were more like the Norwegian root of the
family than like the Swedish, and this same Norwegian strain was

strong in Thea, though in her it took a very different character.
Tillie was a queer, addle-pated thing, as flighty as a girl at thirty-five,
and overweeningly fond of gay clothes-- which taste, as Mrs. Kronborg
philosophically said, did nobody any harm. Tillie was always cheerful,
and her tongue was still for scarcely a minute during the day. She had
been cruelly overworked on her father's Minnesota farm when she was
a young girl, and she had never been so happy as she was now; had
never before, as she said, had such social advantages. She thought her
brother the most important man in