By one amazing indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the Moonstone Drama Club. The club had decided to put on “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh,” a very ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in Andersonville Prison. The members of the club consulted together in Tillie’s absence as to who should play the part of the drummer boy. It must be taken by a very young person, and village boys of that age are self-conscious and are not apt at memorizing. The part was a long one, and clearly it must be given to a girl. Some members of the club suggested Thea Kronborg, others advocated Lily Fisher. Lily’s partisans urged that she was much prettier than Thea, and had a much “sweeter disposition.” Nobody denied these facts. But there was nothing in the least boyish about Lily, and she sang all songs and played all parts alike. Lily’s simper was popular, but it seemed not quite the right thing for the heroic drummer boy.
Upping, the trainer, talked to one and another: “Lily’s all right for girl parts,” he insisted, “but you’ve got to get a girl with some ginger in her for this. Thea’s got the voice, too. When she sings, ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother,’ she’ll bring down the house.”
When all the members of the club had been privately consulted, they announced their decision to Tillie at the first regular meeting that was called to cast the parts. They expected Tillie to be overcome with joy, but, on the contrary, she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid Thea hasn’t got time for that,” she said jerkily. “She is always so busy with her music. Guess you’ll have to get somebody else.”
The club lifted its eyebrows. Several of Lily Fisher’s friends coughed. Mr. Upping flushed. The stout woman who always played the injured wife called Tillie’s attention to the fact that this would be a fine opportunity for her niece to show what she could do. Her tone was condescending.
Tillie threw up her head and laughed; there was something sharp and wild about Tillie’s laugh—when it was not a giggle. “Oh, I guess Thea hasn’t got time to do any showing off. Her time to show off ain’t come yet. I expect she’ll make us all sit up when it does. No use asking her to take the part. She’d turn her nose up at it. I guess they’d be glad to get her in the Denver Dramatics, if they could.”
The company broke up into groups and expressed their amazement. Of course all Swedes were conceited, but they would never have believed that all the conceit of all the Swedes put together would reach such a pitch as this. They confided to each other that Tillie was “just a little off, on the subject of her niece,” and agreed that it would be as well not to excite her further. Tillie got a cold reception at rehearsals for a long while afterward, and Thea had a crop of new enemies without even knowing it.
X
Wunsch and old Fritz and Spanish Johnny celebrated Christmas together, so riotously that Wunsch was unable to give Thea her lesson the next day. In the middle of the vacation week Thea went to the Kohlers’ through a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air was a tender blue-gray, like the color on the doves that flew in and out of the white dove-house on the post in the Kohlers’ garden. The sand hills looked dim and sleepy. The tamarisk hedge was full of snow, like a foam of blossoms drifted over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler was just coming in from the chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her apron and a pair of old top-boots on her feet. She called Thea to come and look at a bantam egg, which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in zeal, and she was always delighted when they accomplished anything. She took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm and smelling of food, and brought her a plateful of little Christmas cakes, made according to old and hallowed formulae, and put them before her while she warmed her feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs and called: “Herr Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!”
Wunsch came down wearing an old wadded jacket, with a velvet collar. The brown silk was so worn that the wadding stuck out almost everywhere. He avoided Thea’s eyes when he came in, nodded without speaking, and pointed directly to the piano stool. He was not so insistent upon the scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata of Mozart’s she was studying, he remained languid and absent-minded. His eyes looked very heavy, and he kept wiping them with one of the new silk handkerchiefs Mrs. Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the lesson was over he did not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on the stool, reached for a tattered book she had taken off the music-rest when she sat down. It was a very old Leipsic edition of the piano score of Gluck’s “Orpheus.” She turned over the pages curiously.
“Is it nice?” she asked.