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 daughter 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 scholars. 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 interru