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 cashmere 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 somewhat 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 themselves 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 children 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 moonstone. she never missed a church service, and, much to the embarrassment of the children, she always “spoke a piece” at the sunday-school concerts. she had a complete set of “standard recitations,” which she conned on sundays. this morning, when thea and her two younger brothers sat down to breakfast, tillie was remonstrating with gunner because he had not learned a recitation assigned to him for george washington day at school. the unmemorized text lay heavily on gunner’s conscience as he attacked his buckwheat cakes and sausage. he knew that tillie was in the right, and that “when the day came he would be ashamed of himself.”
“i don’t care,” he muttered, stirring his coffee; “they oughtn’t to make boys speak. it’s all right for girls. they like to show off.”
“no showing off about it. boys ought to like to speak up for their country. and what was the use of your father buying you a new suit, if you’re not going to take part in anything?”
“that was for sunday-school. i’d rather wear my old one, anyhow. why didn’t they give the piece to thea?” gunner grumbled.
tillie was turning buckwheat cakes at the griddle. “thea can play and sing, she don’t need to speak. but you’ve got to know how to do something, gunner, that you have. what are you going to do when you git big and want to git into society, if you can’t do nothing? everybody’ll say, ‘can you sing? can you play? can you speak? then git right out of society.’ an’ that’s what they’ll say to you, mr. gunner.”
gunner and alex grinned at anna, who was preparing her mother’s breakfast. they never made fun of tillie, but they understood well enough that there were subjects upon which her ideas were rather foolish. when tillie struck the shallows, thea was usually prompt in turning the conversation.
“will you and axel let me have your sled at recess?” she asked.
“all the time?” asked gunner dubiously.
“i’ll work your examples for you to-night, if you do.”
“oh, all right. there’ll be a lot of ’em.”
“i don’t mind, i can work ’em fast. how about yours, axel?”
axel was a fat little boy of seven, with pretty, lazy blue eyes. “i don’t care,” he murmured, buttering his last buckwheat cake without ambition; “too much trouble to copy ’em down. jenny smiley’ll let me have hers.”
the boys were to pull thea to school on their sled, as the snow was deep. the three set off together. anna was now in the high school, and she no longer went with the family party, but walked to school with some of the older girls who were her friends, and wore a hat, not a hood like thea.
