“I think I can bring Mrs. Kronborg around, if I have your consent. I’ve always found her pretty level-headed. I have several old classmates practicing in Chicago. One is a throat specialist. He has a good deal to do with singers. He probably knows the best piano teachers and could recommend a boarding-house where music students stay. I think Thea needs to get among a lot of young people who are clever like herself. Here she has no companions but old fellows like me. It’s not a natural life for a young girl. She’ll either get warped, or wither up before her time. If it will make you and Mrs. Kronborg feel any easier, I’ll be glad to take Thea to Chicago and see that she gets started right. This throat man I speak of is a big fellow in his line, and if I can get him interested, he may be able to put her in the way of a good many things. At any rate, he’ll know the right teachers. Of course, six hundred dollars won’t take her very far, but even half the winter there would be a great advantage. I think Kennedy sized the situation up exactly.”
“Perhaps; I don’t doubt it. You are very kind, Dr. Archie.” Mr. Kronborg was ornamenting his desk-blotter with hieroglyphics. “I should think Denver might be better. There we could watch over her. She is very young.”
Dr. Archie rose. “Kennedy didn’t mention Denver. He said Chicago, repeatedly. Under the circumstances, it seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes exactly, if Thea is willing.”
“Certainly, certainly. Thea is conscientious. She would not waste her opportunities.” Mr. Kronborg paused. “If Thea were your own daughter, doctor, would you consent to such a plan, at her present age?”
“I most certainly should. In fact, if she were my daughter, I’d have sent her away before this. She’s a most unusual child, and she’s only wasting herself here. At her age she ought to be learning, not teaching. She’ll never learn so quickly and easily as she will right now.”
“Well, doctor, you had better talk it over with Mrs. Kronborg. I make it a point to defer to her wishes in such matters. She understands all her children perfectly. I may say that she has all a mother’s insight, and more.”
Dr. Archie smiled. “Yes, and then some. I feel quite confident about Mrs. Kronborg. We usually agree. Good-morning.”
Dr. Archie stepped out into the hot sunshine and walked rapidly toward his office, with a determined look on his face. He found his waiting-room full of patients, and it was one o’clock before he had dismissed the last one. Then he shut his door and took a drink before going over to the hotel for his lunch. He smiled as he locked his cupboard. “I feel almost as gay as if I were going to get away for a winter myself,” he thought.
Afterward Thea could never remember much about that summer, or how she lived through her impatience. She was to set off with Dr. Archie on the fifteenth of October, and she gave lessons until the first of September. Then she began to get her clothes ready, and spent whole afternoons in the village dressmaker’s stuffy, littered little sewing-room. Thea and her mother made a trip to Denver to buy the materials for her dresses. Ready-made clothes for girls were not to be had in those days. Miss Spencer, the dressmaker, declared that she could do handsomely by Thea if they would only let her carry out her own ideas. But Mrs. Kronborg and Thea felt that Miss Spencer’s most daring productions might seem out of place in Chicago, so they restrained her with a firm hand. Tillie, who always helped Mrs. Kronborg with the family sewing, was for letting Miss Spencer challenge Chicago on Thea’s person. Since Ray Kennedy’s death, Thea had become more than ever one of Tillie’s heroines. Tillie swore each of her friends to secrecy, and, coming home from church or leaning over the fence, told them the most touching stories about Ray’s devotion, and how Thea would “never get over it.”
Tillie’s confidences stimulated the general discussion of Thea’s venture. This discussion went on, upon front porches and in back yards, pretty much all summer. Some people approved of Thea’s going to Chicago, but most people did not. There were others who changed their minds about it every day.