she loves to sit there behind her rose-vine and
let her fancy wander where it will. If you chanced to be passing down
that Moonstone street and saw that alert white figure rocking there
behind the screen of roses and lingering late into the night, you might
feel sorry for her, and how mistaken you would be! Tillie lives in a
little magic world, full of secret satisfactions. Thea Kronborg has
given much noble pleasure to a world that needs all it can get, but to
no individual has she given more than to her queer old aunt in
Moonstone. The legend of Kronborg, the artist, fills Tillie's life; she
feels rich and exalted in it. What delightful things happen in her mind
as she sits there rocking! She goes back to those early days of sand and
sun, when Thea was a child and Tillie was herself, so it seems to her,
"young." When she used to hurry to church to hear Mr. Kronborg's
wonderful sermons, and when Thea used to stand up by the organ of a
bright Sunday morning and sing "Come, Ye Disconsolate." Or she thinks
about that wonderful time when the Metropolitan Opera Company sang a
week's engagement in Kansas City, and Thea sent for her and had her stay
with her at the Coates House and go to every performance at Convention
Hall. Thea let Tillie go through her costume trunks and try on her wigs
and jewels. And the kindness of Mr. Ottenburg! When Thea dined in her
own room, he went down to dinner with Tillie, and never looked bored or
absent-minded when she chattered. He took her to the hall the first time
Thea sang there, and sat in the box with her and helped her through
"Lohengrin." After the first act, when Tillie turned tearful eyes to him
and burst out, "I don't care, she always seemed grand like that, even
when she was a girl. I expect I'm crazy, but she just seems to me full
of all them old times!"--Ottenburg was so sympathetic and patted her
hand and said, "But that's just what she is, full of the old times, and
you are a wise woman to see it." Yes, he said that to her. Tillie often
wondered how she had been able to bear it when Thea came down the stairs
in the wedding robe embroidered in silver, with a train so long it took
six women to carry it.

Tillie had lived fifty-odd years for that week, but she got it, and no
miracle was ever more miraculous than that. When she used to be working
in the fields on her father's Minnesota farm, she couldn't help
believing that she would some day have to do with the "wonderful,"
thou