Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/417

 "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 her, hide some of that still passion of which her daughter was all-compact?

"That last summer at home was n't very nice for her," Mrs. Kronborg began as placidly as if the fire had never leaped up in her. "The other children were acting-up because they thought I might make a fuss over her and give her the big-head. We gave her the dare, somehow, the lot of us, because we could n't understand her changing teachers and all that. That 's the trouble about giving the dare to them quiet, unboastful children; you never know how far it 'll take em. Well, we ought not to complain, doctor; she 's given us a good deal to think about."

The next time Dr. Archie came to Moonstone, he came to be a pall-bearer at Mrs. Kronborg's funeral. When he