II


For the next four days it seemed to Dr. Archie that
his patient might slip through his hands, do what he
might. But she did not. On the contrary, after that she
recovered very rapidly. As her father remarked, she must
have inherited the "constitution" which he was never tired
of admiring in her mother.

One afternoon, when her new brother was a week old, the
doctor found Thea very comfortable and happy in her bed
in the parlor. The sunlight was pouring in over her shoulders,
the baby was asleep on a pillow in a big rocking-chair beside
her. Whenever he stirred, she put out her hand and rocked
him. Nothing of him was visible but a flushed, puffy fore-
head and an uncompromisingly big, bald cranium. The
door into her mother's room stood open, and Mrs. Kronborg
was sitting up in bed darning stockings. She was a short,
stalwart woman, with a short neck and a determined-looking
head. Her skin was very fair, her face calm and unwrinkled,
and her yellow hair, braided down her back as she lay in
bed, still looked like a girl's. She was a woman whom
Dr. Archie respected; active, practical, unruffled; good-
humored, but determined. Exactly the sort of woman to
take care of a flighty preacher. She had brought her hus-
band some property, too,--one fourth of her father's broad
acres in Nebraska,--but this she kept in her own name.