she comprehended perfectly. To any other woman there,
it would have meant that a child must have her hair curled every day and
must play in public. Mrs. Kronborg knew it meant that Thea must practice
four hours a day. A child with talent must be kept at the piano, just as
a child with measles must be kept under the blankets. Mrs. Kronborg and
her three sisters had all studied piano, and all sang well, but none of
them had talent. Their father had played the oboe in an orchestra in
Sweden, before he came to America to better his fortunes. He had even
known Jenny Lind. A child with talent had to be kept at the piano; so
twice a week in summer and once a week in winter Thea went over the
gulch to the Kohlers', though the Ladies' Aid Society thought it was not
proper for their preacher's daughter to go "where there was so much
drinking." Not that the Kohler sons ever so much as looked at a glass of
beer. They were ashamed of their old folks and got out into the world as
fast as possible; had their clothes made by a Denver tailor and their
necks shaved up under their hair and forgot the past. Old Fritz and
Wunsch, however, indulged in a friendly bottle pretty often. The two men
were like comrades; perhaps the bond between them was the glass wherein
lost hopes are found; perhaps it was common memories of another country;
perhaps it was the grapevine in the garden--knotty, fibrous shrub, full
of homesickness and sentiment, which the Germans have carried around the
world with them.

As Thea approached the house she peeped between the pink sprays of the
tamarisk hedge and saw the Professor and Mrs. Kohler in the garden,
spading and raking. The garden looked like a relief-map now, and gave no
indication of what it would be in August; such a jungle! Pole beans and
potatoes and corn and leeks and kale and red cabbage--there would even
be vegetables for which there is no American name. Mrs. Kohler was
always getting by mail packages of seeds from Freeport and from the old
country. Then the flowers! There were big sunflowers for the canary
bird, tiger lilies and phlox and zinnias and lady's-slippers and
portulaca and hollyhocks,--giant hollyhocks. Beside the fruit trees
there was a great umbrella-shaped catalpa, and a balm-of-Gilead, two
lindens, and even a ginka,--a rigid, pointed tree with leaves shaped
like butterflies, which shivered, but never bent to the wind.

This morning Thea saw to her delight that the two oleander trees, o