or crystals and agates and bits of pink chalcedony. She had two
cigar boxes full of stones that she had found or traded for, and she
imagined that they were of enormous value. She was always planning how
she would have them set.

"What are you reading?" The doctor reached under the covers and pulled
out a book of Byron's poems. "Do you like this?"

She looked confused, turned over a few pages rapidly, and pointed to "My
native land, good-night." "That," she said sheepishly.

"How about 'Maid of Athens'?"

She blushed and looked at him suspiciously. "I like 'There was a sound
of revelry,'" she muttered.

The doctor laughed and closed the book. It was clumsily bound in padded
leather and had been presented to the Reverend Peter Kronborg by his
Sunday-School class as an ornament for his parlor table.

"Come into the office some day, and I'll lend you a nice book. You can
skip the parts you don't understand. You can read it in vacation.
Perhaps you'll be able to understand all of it by then."

Thea frowned and looked fretfully toward the piano. "In vacation I have
to practice four hours every day, and then there'll be Thor to take care
of." She pronounced it "Tor."

"Thor? Oh, you've named the baby Thor?" exclaimed the doctor.

Thea frowned again, still more fiercely, and said quickly, "That's a
nice name, only maybe it's a little--old fashioned." She was very
sensitive about being thought a foreigner, and was proud of the fact
that, in town, her father always preached in English; very bookish
English, at that, one might add.

Born in an old Scandinavian colony in Minnesota, Peter Kronborg had been
sent to a small divinity school in Indiana by the women of a Swedish
evangelical mission, who were convinced of his gifts and who skimped and
begged and gave church suppers to get the long, lazy youth through the
seminary. He could still speak enough Swedish to exhort and to bury the
members of his country church out at Copper Hole, and he wielded in his
Moonstone pulpit a somewhat pompous English vocabulary he had learned
out of books at college. He always spoke of "the infant Saviour," "our
Heavenly Father," etc. The poor man had no natural, spontaneous human
speech. If he had his sincere moments, they were perforce inarticulate.
Probably a good deal of his pretentiousness was due to the fact that he
habitually expressed himself in a book learned language, wholly remote
from anything personal, native, or homely. Mrs.