By the time Thea’s fifteenth birthday came round, she was established as a music teacher in Moonstone. The new room had been added to the house early in the spring, and Thea had been giving her lessons there since the middle of May. She liked the personal independence which was accorded her as a wage-earner. The family questioned her comings and goings very little. She could go buggy-riding with Ray Kennedy, for instance, without taking Gunner or Axel. She could go to Spanish Johnny’s and sing part songs with the Mexicans, and nobody objected.
 
Thea was still under the first excitement of teaching, and was terribly in earnest about it. If a pupil did not get on well, she fumed¹ and fretted². She counted until she was hoarse³. She listened to scales in her sleep. Wunsch had taught only one pupil seriously, but Thea taught twenty. The duller they were, the more furiously she poked⁴ and prodded⁵ them. With the little girls she was nearly always patient, but with pupils older than herself, she sometimes lost her temper. One of her mistakes was to let herself in for a calling-down from Mrs. Livery Johnson. That lady appeared at the Kronborgs’ one morning and announced that she would allow no girl to stamp her foot at her daughter Grace. She added that Thea’s bad manners with the older girls were being talked about all over town, and that if her temper did not speedily improve she would lose all her advanced pupils. Thea was frightened. She felt she could never bear the disgrace, if such a thing happened. Besides, what would her father say, after he had gone to the expense of building an addition to the house? Mrs. Johnson demanded an apology to Grace. Thea said she was willing to make it. Mrs. Johnson said that hereafter, since she had taken lessons of the best piano teacher in Grinnell, Iowa, she herself would decide what pieces Grace should study. Thea readily consented to that, and Mrs. Johnson rustled⁶ away to tell a neighbor woman that Thea Kronborg could be meek⁷ enough when you went at her right.
 
Thea was telling Ray about this unpleasant encounter as they were driving out to the sand hills the next Sunday.
 
“She was stuffing you, all right, Thee,” Ray reassured⁸ her. “There’s no general dissatisfaction among your scholars. She just wanted to get in a knock. I talked to the piano tuner the last time he was here, and he said all the people he tuned¹⁰ for expressed themselves very favorably about your teaching. I wish you didn’t take so much pains with them, myself.”
 
“But I have to, Ray. They’re all so dumb. They’ve got no ambition,” Thea exclaimed irritably¹¹. “Jenny Smiley is the only one who isn’t stupid. She can read pretty well, and she has such good hands. But she don’t care a rap about it. She has no pride.”
 
Ray’s face was full of complacent¹² satisfaction as he glanced sidewise at Thea, but she was looking off intently into the mirage¹³, at one of those mammoth¹⁴ cattle that are nearly always reflected there. “Do you find it easier to teach in your new room?” he asked.
 
“Yes; I’m not interrupted so much. Of course, if I ever happen to want to practice at night, that’s always the night Anna chooses to go to bed early.”
 
“It’s a darned shame, Thee, you didn’t cop that room for yourself. I’m sore at the padre about that. He ought to give you that room. You could fix it up so pretty.”
 
“I didn’t want it, honest I didn’t. Father would have let me have it. I like my own room better. Somehow I can think better in a little room. Besides, up there I am away from everybody, and I can read as late as I please and nobody nags¹⁵ me.”
 
“A growing girl needs lots of sleep,” Ray providently¹⁶ remarked.
 
Thea moved restlessly on the buggy cushions. “They need other things more,” she muttered. “Oh, I forgot. I brought something to show you. Look here, it came on my birthday. Wasn’t it nice of him to remember?” She took from her pocket a postcard, bent¹⁷ in the middle and folded, and handed it to Ray. On it was a white dove, perched on a wreath of very blue forget-me-nots, and “Birthday Greetings” in gold letters. Under this was written, “From A. Wunsch.”
 
Ray turned the card over, examined the postmark, and then began to laugh.
 
“Concord, Kansas. He has my sympathy!&r............