Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/495

 a title, and she did not boast much about Ottenburg,—at least not until after her memorable trip to Kansas City to hear Thea sing.

Tillie is the last Kronborg left in Moonstone. She lives alone in a little house with a green yard, and keeps a fancy-work and millinery store. Her business methods are informal, and she would never come out even at the end of the year, if she did not receive a draft for a good round sum from her niece at Christmas time. The arrival of this draft always renews the discussion as to what Thea would do for her aunt if she really did the right thing. Most of the Moonstone people think Thea ought to take Tillie to New York and keep her as a companion. While they are feeling sorry for Tillie because she does not live at the Plaza, Tillie is trying not to hurt their feelings by showing too plainly how much she realizes the superiority of her position. She tries to be modest when she complains to the postmaster that her New York paper is more than three days late. It means enough, surely, on the face of it, that she is the only person in Moonstone who takes a New York paper or who has any reason for taking one. A foolish young girl, Tillie lived in the splendid sorrows of "Wanda" and "Strathmore"; a foolish old girl, she lives in her niece's triumphs. A$ she often says, she just missed going on the stage herself.

That night after the sociable, as Tillie tripped home with a crowd of noisy boys and girls, she was perhaps a shade troubled. The twin's question rather lingered in her ears. Did she, perhaps, insist too much on that thousand dollars? Surely, people did n't for a minute think it was the money she cared about? As for that, Tillie tossed her head, she did n't care a rap. They must understand that this money was different. When the laughing little group that brought her home had gone weaving down the sidewalk through the leafy shadows and had disappeared, Tillie brought out a rocking