uld do. If she wasn't disturbed, she needed no watching. She went
after it like a terrier after rats from the first, poor child. She was
downright afraid of it. That's why I always encouraged her taking Thor
off to outlandish places. When she was out of the house, then she was
rid of it."

After they had recalled many pleasant memories together, Mrs. Kronborg
said suddenly: "I always understood about her going off without coming
to see us that time. Oh, I know! You had to keep your own counsel. You
were a good friend to her. I've never forgot that." She patted the
doctor's sleeve and went on absently. "There was something she didn't
want to tell me, and that's why she didn't come. Something happened when
she was with those people in Mexico. I worried for a good while, but I
guess she's come out of it all right. She'd had a pretty hard time,
scratching along alone like that when she was so young, and my farms in
Nebraska were down so low that I couldn't help her none. That's no way
to send a girl out. But I guess, whatever there was, she wouldn't be
afraid to tell me now." Mrs. Kronborg looked up at the photograph with a
smile. "She doesn't look like she was beholding to anybody, does she?"

"She isn't, Mrs. Kronborg. She never has been. That was why she borrowed
the money from me."

"Oh, I knew she'd never have sent for you if she'd done anything to
shame us. She was always proud." Mrs. Kronborg paused and turned a
little on her side. "It's been quite a satisfaction to you and me,
doctor, having her voice turn out so fine. The things you hope for don't
always turn out like that, by a long sight. As long as old Mrs. Kohler
lived, she used always to translate what it said about Thea in the
German papers she sent. I could make some of it out myself,--it's not
very different from Swedish,--but it pleased the old lady. She left Thea
her piece-picture of the burning of Moscow. I've got it put away in
moth-balls for her, along with the oboe her grandfather brought from
Sweden. I want her to take father's oboe back there some day." Mrs.
Kronborg paused a moment and compressed her lips. "But I guess she'll
take a finer instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!" she added.

Her tone fairly startled the doctor, it was so vibrating with a fierce,
defiant kind of pride he had heard often in Thea's voice. He looked down
wonderingly at his old friend and patient. After all, one never knew
people to the core. Did she, within he