THE PRAIREE TRILOGY: O, Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark & My Ántonia. Willa Cather

had lots of fun that time I mashed my finger and you wouldn’t let Professor Wunsch make me practice. Only I had to do left hand, even then. I think that was mean.”

      The doctor took her hand and examined the forefinger, where the nail had grown back a little crooked. “You mustn’t trim it down close at the corner there, and then it will grow straight. You won’t want it crooked when you’re a big girl and wear rings and have sweethearts.”

      She made a mocking little face at him and looked at his new scarf-pin. “That’s the prettiest one you ev-ER had. I wish you’d stay a long while and let me look at it. What is it?”

      Dr. Archie laughed. “It’s an opal. Spanish Johnny brought it up for me from Chihuahua in his shoe. I had it set in Denver, and I wore it today for your benefit.”

      Thea had a curious passion for jewelry. She wanted every shining stone she saw, and in summer she was always going off into the sand hills to hunt for crystals and agates and bits of pink chalcedony. She had two cigar boxes full of stones that she had found or traded for, and she imagined that they were of enormous value. She was always planning how she would have them set.

      “What are you reading?” The doctor reached under the covers and pulled out a book of Byron’s poems. “Do you like this?”

      She looked confused, turned over a few pages rapidly, and pointed to “My native land, good-night.” “That,” she said sheepishly.

      “How about ‘Maid of Athens’?”

      She blushed and looked at him suspiciously. “I like ‘There was a sound of revelry,’” she muttered.

      The doctor laughed and closed the book. It was clumsily bound in padded leather and had been presented to the Reverend Peter Kronborg by his Sunday–School class as an ornament for his parlor table.

      “Come into the office some day, and I’ll lend you a nice book. You can skip the parts you don’t understand. You can read it in vacation. Perhaps you’ll be able to understand all of it by then.”

      Thea frowned and looked fretfully toward the piano. “In vacation I have to practice four hours every day, and then there’ll be Thor to take care of.” She pronounced it “Tor.”

      “Thor? Oh, you’ve named the baby Thor?” exclaimed the doctor.

      Thea frowned again, still more fiercely, and said quickly, “That’s a nice name, only maybe it’s a little — old fashioned.” She was very sensitive about being thought a foreigner, and was proud of the fact that, in town, her father always preached in English; very bookish English, at that, one might add.

      Born in an old Scandinavian colony in Minnesota, Peter Kronborg had been sent to a small divinity school in Indiana by the women of a Swedish evangelical mission, who were convinced of his gifts and who skimped and begged and gave church suppers to get the long, lazy youth through the seminary. He could still speak enough Swedish to exhort and to bury the members of his country church out at Copper Hole, and he wielded in his Moonstone pulpit a somewhat pompous English vocabulary he had learned out of books at college. He always spoke of “the infant Saviour,” “our Heavenly Father,” etc. The poor man had no natural, spontaneous human speech. If he had his sincere moments, they were perforce inarticulate. Probably a good deal of his pretentiousness was due to the fact that he habitually expressed himself in a book learned language, wholly remote from anything personal, native, or homely. Mrs. Kronborg spoke Swedish to her own sisters and to her sister-inlaw Tillie, and colloquial English to her neighbors. Thea, who had a rather sensitive ear, until she went to school never spoke at all, except in monosyllables, and her mother was convinced that she was tongue-tied. She was still inept in speech for a child so intelligent. Her ideas were usually clear, but she seldom attempted to explain them, even at school, where she excelled in “written work” and never did more than mutter a reply.

      “Your music professor stopped me on the street today and asked me how you were,” said the doctor, rising. “He’ll be sick himself, trotting around in this slush with no overcoat or overshoes.”

      “He’s poor,” said Thea simply.

      The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid he’s worse than that. Is he always all right when you take your lessons? Never acts as if he’d been drinking?”

      Thea looked angry and spoke excitedly. “He knows a lot. More than anybody. I don’t care if he does drink; he’s old and poor.” Her voice shook a little.

      Mrs. Kronborg spoke up from the next room. “He’s a good teacher, doctor. It’s good for us he does drink. He’d never be in a little place like this if he didn’t have some weakness. These women that teach music around here don’t know nothing. I wouldn’t have my child wasting time with them. If Professor Wunsch goes away, Thea’ll have nobody to take from. He’s careful with his scholars; he don’t use bad language. Mrs. Kohler is always present when Thea takes her lesson. It’s all right.” Mrs. Kronborg spoke calmly and judicially. One could see that she had thought the matter out before.

      “I’m glad to hear that, Mrs. Kronborg. I wish we could get the old man off his bottle and keep him tidy. Do you suppose if I gave you an old overcoat you could get him to wear it?” The doctor went to the bedroom door and Mrs. Kronborg looked up from her darning.

      “Why, yes, I guess he’d be glad of it. He’ll take most anything from me. He won’t buy clothes, but I guess he’d wear ’em if he had ’em. I’ve never had any clothes to give him, having so many to make over for.”

      “I’ll have Larry bring the coat around to-night. You aren’t cross with me, Thea?” taking her hand.

      Thea grinned warmly. “Not if you give Professor Wunsch a coat — and things,” she tapped the grapes significantly. The doctor bent over and kissed her.

      III

      Table of Contents

      Being sick was all very well, but Thea knew from experience that starting back to school again was attended by depressing difficulties. One Monday morning she got up early with Axel and Gunner, who shared her wing room, and hurried into the back living-room, between the dining-room and the kitchen. There, beside a soft-coal stove, the younger children of the family undressed at night and dressed in the morning. The older daughter, Anna, and the two big boys slept upstairs, where the rooms were theoretically warmed by stovepipes from below. The first (and the worst!) thing that confronted Thea was a suit of clean, prickly red flannel, fresh from the wash. Usually the torment of breaking in a clean suit of flannel came on Sunday, but yesterday, as she was staying in the house, she had begged off. Their winter underwear was a trial to all the children, but it was bitterest to Thea because she happened to have the most sensitive skin. While she was tugging it on, her Aunt Tillie brought in warm water from the boiler and filled the tin pitcher. Thea washed her face, brushed and braided her hair, and got into her blue cashmere dress. Over this she buttoned a long apron, with sleeves, which would not be removed until she put on her cloak to go to school. Gunner and Axel, on the soap box behind the stove, had their usual quarrel about which should wear the tightest stockings, but they exchanged reproaches in low tones, for they were wholesomely afraid of Mrs. Kronborg’s rawhide whip. She did not chastise her children often, but she did it thoroughly. Only a somewhat stern system of discipline could have kept any degree of order and quiet in that overcrowded house.

      Mrs. Kronborg’s children were all trained to dress themselves at the earliest possible age, to make their own beds, — the boys as well as the girls, — to take care of their clothes, to eat what was given them, and to keep out of the way. Mrs. Kronborg would have made a good chess player; she had a head for moves and positions.

      Anna, the elder daughter, was her mother’s lieutenant. All the children knew that they must obey Anna, who was an obstinate contender for proprieties and not always fair minded. To see the young Kronborgs headed for Sunday School was like watching a military drill. Mrs. Kronborg let her children’s minds