r book the drug-store man had given her
because he couldn't sell it. She had trained herself to put her mind on
what she was doing, otherwise she would have come to grief with her
complicated daily schedule. She read, as intently as if she had not been
flushed with anger, the strange "Musical Memories" of the Reverend H. R.
Haweis. At last she blew out the lantern and went to sleep. She had many
curious dreams that night. In one of them Mrs. Tellamantez held her
shell to Thea's ear, and she heard the roaring, as before, and distant
voices calling, "Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!"

IX

Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his
children remarkable. If one of the business men downtown remarked to him
that he "had a mighty bright little girl, there," he admitted it, and at
once began to explain what a "long head for business" his son Gus had,
or that Charley was "a natural electrician," and had put in a telephone
from the house to the preacher's study behind the church.

Mrs. Kronborg watched her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more
interesting than her other children, and she took her more seriously,
without thinking much about why she did so. The other children had to be
guided, directed, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley and
Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel about it. Anna
often demanded unreasonable service from her older brothers; that they
should sit up until after midnight to bring her home from parties when
she did not like the youth who had offered himself as her escort; or
that they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter night,
to take her to a ranch dance, after they had been working hard all day.
Gunner often got bored with his own clothes or stilts or sled, and
wanted Axel's. But Thea, from the time she was a little thing, had her
own routine. She kept out of every one's way, and was hard to manage
only when the other children interfered with her. Then there was trouble
indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm Mrs. Kronborg. "You ought
to know enough to let Thea alone. She lets you alone," she often said to
the other children.

One may have staunch friends in one's own family, but one seldom has
admirers. Thea, however, had one in the person of her addle-pated aunt,
Tillie Kronborg. In older countries, where dress and opinions and
manners are not so thoroughly standardized as in our own West, there is
a belief that peop