Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable¹ child; but so were all his children remarkable. If one of the business men downtown remarked to him that he “had a mighty² bright little girl, there,” he admitted it, and at once began to explain what a “long head for business” his son Gus had, or that Charley was “a natural electrician,” and had put in a telephone from the house to the preacher’s study behind the church.
 
Mrs. Kronborg watched her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more interesting than her other children, and she took her more seriously, without thinking much about why she did so. The other children had to be guided, directed, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley and Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel about it. Anna often demanded unreasonable³ service from her older brothers; that they should sit up until after midnight to bring her home from parties when she did not like the youth who had offered himself as her escort; or that they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter night, to take her to a ranch⁴ dance, after they had been working hard all day. Gunner often got bored with his own clothes or stilts⁵ or sled, and wanted Axel’s. But Thea, from the time she was a little thing, had her own routine. She kept out of every one’s way, and was hard to manage only when the other children interfered⁶ with her. Then there was trouble indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm Mrs. Kronborg. “You ought to know enough to let Thea alone. She lets you alone,” she often said to the other children.
 
One may have staunch friends in one’s own family, but one seldom has admirers. Thea, however, had one in the person of her addle-pated aunt, Tillie Kronborg. In older countries, where dress and opinions and manners are not so thoroughly⁷ standardized⁸ as in our own West, there is a belief that people who are foolish about the more obvious things of life are apt to have peculiar⁹ insight into what lies beyond the obvious. The old woman who can never learn not to put the kerosene¹⁰ can on the stove, may yet be able to tell fortunes, to persuade a backward child to grow, to cure warts¹¹, or to tell people what to do with a young girl who has gone melancholy¹². Tillie’s mind was a curious machine; when she was awake it went round like a wheel when the belt has slipped off, and when she was asleep she dreamed follies¹³. But she had intuitions. She knew, for instance, that Thea was different from the other Kronborgs, worthy¹⁴ though they all were. Her romantic imagination found possibilities in her niece. When she was sweeping¹⁵ or ironing, or turning the ice-cream freezer at a furious rate, she often built up brilliant futures¹⁶ for Thea, adapting freely the latest novel she had read.
 
Tillie made enemies for her niece among the church people because, at sewing societies and church suppers, she sometimes spoke¹⁷ vauntingly, with a toss of her head, just as if Thea’s “wonderfulness” were an accepted fact in Moonstone, like Mrs. Archie’s stinginess, or Mrs. Livery Johnson’s duplicity. People declared that, on this subject, Tillie made them tired.
 
Tillie belonged to a dramatic club that once a year performed in the Moonstone Opera House such plays as “Among the Breakers,” and “The Veteran of 1812.” Tillie played character parts, the flirtatious¹⁸ old maid or the spiteful intrigante. She used to study her parts up in the attic¹⁹ at home. While she was committing the lines, she got Gunner or Anna to hold the book for her, but when she began “to bring out the expression,” as she said, she used, very timorously²⁰, to ask Thea to hold the book. Thea was usually—not always—agreeable about it. Her mother had told her that, since she had some influence with Tillie, it would be a good thing for them all if she could tone her down a shade and “keep her from taking on any worse than need be.” Thea would sit on the foot of Tillie’s bed, her feet tucked under her, and stare at the silly text. “I wouldn’t make so much fuss, there, Tillie,” she would remark occasionally; “I don’t see the point in it”; or, “What do you pitch your voice so high for? It don’t carry half as well.”
 
“I don’t see how it comes Thea is so patient with Tillie,” Mrs. Kronborg more than once remarked to her husband. “She ain’t patient with most people, but it seems like she’s got a peculiar patience for Tillie.”
 
Tillie always coaxed²¹ Thea to go “behind the ............