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.

IV

"And it was Summer, beautiful Summer!" Those were the closing words of
Thea's favorite fairy tale, and she thought of them as she ran out into
the world one Saturday morning in May, her music book under her arm. She
was going to the Kohlers' to take her lesson, but she was in no hurry.

It was in the summer that one really lived. Then all the little
overcrowded houses were opened wide, and the wind blew through them with
sweet, earthy smells of garden-planting. The town looked as if it had
just been washed. People were out painting their fences. The cottonwood
trees were a-flicker with sticky,