By the time Thea's fifteenth birthday came round, she
was established as a music teacher in Moonstone.
The new room had been added to the house early in the
spring, and Thea had been giving her lessons there since
the middle of May. She liked the personal independence
which was accorded her as a wage-earner. The family ques-
tioned her comings and goings very little. She could go
buggy-riding with Ray Kennedy, for instance, without tak-
ing Gunner or Axel. She could go to Spanish Johnny's and
sing part songs with the Mexicans, and nobody objected.
Thea was still under the first excitement of teaching, and
was terribly in earnest about it. If a pupil did not get on
well, she fumed and fretted. She counted until she was
hoarse. She listened to scales in her sleep. Wunsch had
taught only one pupil seriously, but Thea taught twenty.
The duller they were, the more furiously she poked and
prodded them. With the little girls she was nearly always
patient, but with pupils older than herself, she sometimes
lost her temper. One of her mistakes was to let herself in
for a calling-down from Mrs. Livery Johnson. That lady
appeared at the Kronborgs' one morning and announced
that she would allow no girl to stamp her foot at her daugh-
ter Grace. She added that Thea's bad manners with the
older girls were being talked about all over town, and that
if her temper did not speedily improve she would lose all
her advanced pupils. Thea was frightened. She felt she
could never bear the disgrace, if such a thing happened.
Besides, what would her father say, after he had gone to
the expense of building an addition to the house? Mrs.
Johnson demanded an apology to Grace. Thea said she
was willing to make it. Mrs. Johnson said that hereafter,
since she had taken lessons of the best piano teacher in
Grinnell, Iowa, she herself would decide what pieces
Grace should study. Thea readily consented to that, and
Mrs. Johnson rustled away to tell a neighbor woman that
Thea Kronborg could be meek enough when you went at
her right.
Thea was telling Ray about this unpleasant encounter as
they were driving out to the sand hills the next Sunday.
"She was stuffing you, all right, Thee," Ray reassured
her. "There's no general dissatisfaction among your schol-
ars. She just wanted to get in a knock. I talked to the
piano tuner the last time he was here, and he said all the
people he tuned for expressed themselves very favorably
about your teaching. I wish you didn't take so much pains
with them, myself."
"But I have to, Ray. They're all so dumb. They've
got no ambition," Thea exclaimed irritably. "Jenny
Smiley is the only one who isn't stupid. She can read
pretty well, and she has such good hands. But she don't
care a rap about it. She has no pride."
Ray's face was full of complacent satisfaction as he
glanced sidewise at Thea, but she was looking off intently
into the mirage, at one of those mammoth cattle that are
nearly always reflected there. "Do you find it easier to
teach in your new room?" he asked.
"Yes; I'm not interrupted so much. Of course, if I ever
happen to want to practice at night, that's always the
night Anna chooses to go to bed early."
"It's a darned shame, Thee, you didn't cop that room
for yourself. I'm sore at the PADRE about that. He ought
to give you that room. You could fix it up so pretty."
"I didn't want it, honest I didn't. Father would have
let me have it. I like my own room better. Somehow I
can think better in a little room. Besides, up there I am
away from everybody, and I can read as late as I please
and nobody nags me."
"A growing girl needs lots of sleep," Ray providently
remarked.
Thea moved restlessly on the buggy cushions. "They
need other things more," she muttered. "Oh, I forgot.
I brought something to show you. Look here, it came on
my birthday. Wasn't it nice of him to remember?" She
took from her pocket a postcard, bent in the middle and
folded, and handed it to Ray. On it was a white dove,
perched on a wreath of very blue forget-me-nots, and
"Birthday Greetings" in gold letters. Under this was
written, "From A. Wunsch."
Ray turned the card over, examined the postmark, and
then began to laugh.
"Concord, Kansas. He has my sympathy!"
"Why, is that a poor town?"
"It's the jumping-off place, no town at all. Some houses
dumped down in the middle of a cornfield. You get lost in
the corn. Not even a saloon to keep things going; sell whis-
key without a license at the butcher shop, beer on ice with
the liver and beefsteak. I wouldn't stay there over Sunday
for a ten-dollar bill."
"Oh, dear! What do you suppose he's doing there?
Maybe he just stopped off there a few days to tune pianos,"
Thea suggested hopefully.
Ray gave her back the card. "He's headed in the wrong
direction. What does he want to get back into a grass
country for? Now, there are lots of good live towns down
on the Santa Fe, and everybody down there is musical.
He could always get a job playing in saloons if he was dead-
broke. I've figured out that I've got no years of my life to
waste in a Methodist country where they raise pork."
"We must stop on our way back and show this card to
Mrs. Kohler. She misses him so."
"By the way, Thee, I hear the old woman goes to church
every Sunday to hear you sing. Fritz tells me he has to
wait till two o'clock for his Sunday dinner these days. The
church people ought to give you credit for that, when they
go for you."
Thea shook her head and spoke in a tone of resignation.
"They'll always go for me, just as they did for Wunsch.
It wasn't because he drank they went for him; not really.
It was something else."
"You want to salt your money down, Thee, and go to
Chicago and take some lessons. Then you come back, and
wear a long feather and high heels and put on a few airs,
and that'll fix 'em. That's what they like."
"I'll never have money enough to go to Chicago. Mother
meant to lend me some, I think, but now they've got hard
times back in Nebraska, and her farm don't bring her in
anything. Takes all the tenant can raise to pay the taxes.
Don't let's talk about that. You promised to tell me about
the play you went to see in Denver."
Any one would have liked to hear Ray's simple and clear
account of the performance he had seen at the Tabor Grand
Opera House--Maggie Mitchell in LITTLE BAREFOOT--and
any one would have liked to watch his kind face. Ray
looked his best out of doors, when his thick red hands were
covered by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned face
somehow seemed right in the light and wind. He looked
better, too, with his hat on; his hair was thin and dry, with
no particular color or character, "regular Willy-boy hair,"
as he himself described it. His eyes were pale beside the
reddish bronze of his skin. They had the faded look often
seen in the eyes of men who have lived much in the sun
and wind and who have been accustomed to train their
vision upon distant objects.
Ray realized that Thea's life was dull and exacting, and
that she missed Wunsch. He knew she worked hard, that
she put up with a great many little annoyances, and that
her duties as a teacher separated her more than ever from
the boys and girls of her own age. He did everything he
could to provide recreation for her. He brought her candy
and magazines and pineapples--of which she was very fond
--from Denver, and kept his eyes and ears open for any-
thing that might interest her. He was, of course, living for
Thea. He had thought it all out carefully and had made
up his mind just when he would speak to her. When she
was seventeen, then he would tell her his plan and ask her
to marry him. He would be willing to wait two, or even
three years, until she was twenty, if she thought best. By
that time he would surely have got in on something: cop-
per, oil, gold, silver, sheep,--something.
Meanwhile, it was pleasure enough to feel that she de-
pended on him more and more, that she leaned upon his
steady kindness. He never broke faith with himself about
her; he never hinted to her of his hopes for the future,
never suggested that she might be more intimately con-
fidential with him, or talked to her of the thing he thought
about so constantly. He had the chivalry which is per-
haps the proudest possession of his race. He had never
embarrassed her by so much as a glance. Sometimes,
when they drove out to the sand hills, he let his left arm
lie along the back of the buggy seat, but it never came any
nearer to Thea than that, never touched her. He often
turned to her a face full of pride, and frank admiration,
but his glance was never so intimate or so penetrating
as Dr. Archie's. His blue eyes were clear and shallow,
friendly, uninquiring. He rested Thea because he was so
different; because, though he often told her interesting
things, he never set lively fancies going in her head; because
he never misunderstood her, and because he never, by any
chance, for a single instant, understood her! Yes, with
Ray she was safe; by him she would never be discovered!
Read next: PART I - FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD#Chapter 16
Read previous: PART I - FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD#Chapter 14
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