e only place that seemed to him at all desirable
was full, and the mistress of the house could not give Thea a room in
which she could have a piano. She said Thea might use the piano in her
parlor; but when Dr. Archie went to look at the parlor he found a girl
talking to a young man on one of the corner sofas. Learning that the
boarders received all their callers there, he gave up that house, too,
as hopeless.

So when they set out to make the acquaintance of Mr. Larsen on the
afternoon he had appointed, the question of a lodging was still
undecided. The Swedish Reform Church was in a sloughy, weedy district,
near a group of factories. The church itself was a very neat little
building. The parsonage, next door, looked clean and comfortable, and
there was a well-kept yard about it, with a picket fence. Thea saw
several little children playing under a swing, and wondered why
ministers always had so many. When they rang at the parsonage door, a
capable-looking Swedish servant girl answered the bell and told them
that Mr. Larsen's study was in the church, and that he was waiting for
them there.

Mr. Larsen received them very cordially. The furniture in his study was
so new and the pictures were so heavily framed, that Thea thought it
looked more like the waiting-room of the fashionable Denver dentist to
whom Dr. Archie had taken her that summer, than like a preacher's study.
There were even flowers in a glass vase on the desk. Mr. Larsen was a
small, plump man, with a short, yellow beard, very white teeth, and a
little turned-up nose on which he wore gold-rimmed eye-glasses. He
looked about thirty-five, but he was growing bald, and his thin, hair
was parted above his left ear and brought up over the bare spot on the
top of his head. He looked cheerful and agreeable. He wore a blue coat
and no cuffs.

After Dr. Archie and Thea sat down on a slippery leather couch, the
minister asked for an outline of Thea's plans. Dr. Archie explained that
she meant to study piano with Andor Harsanyi; that they had already seen
him, that Thea had played for him and he said he would be glad to teach
her.

Mr. Larsen lifted his pale eyebrows and rubbed his plump white hands
together. "But he is a concert pianist already. He will be very
expensive."

"That's why Miss Kronborg wants to get a church position if possible.
She has not money enough to see her through the winter. There's no use
her coming all the way from Colorado and studying