strong in Thea, though in her it took a very different
character.

Tillie was a queer, addle-pated thing, as flighty as a girl
at thirty-five, and overweeningly fond of gay clothes--
which taste, as Mrs. Kronborg philosophically said, did
nobody any harm. Tillie was always cheerful, and her
tongue was still for scarcely a minute during the day. She
had been cruelly overworked on her father's Minnesota
farm when she was a young girl, and she had never been
so happy as she was now; had never before, as she said,
had such social advantages. She thought her brother the
most important man in Moonstone. She never missed a
church service, and, much to the embarrassment of the
children, she always "spoke a piece" at the Sunday-School
concerts. She had a complete set of "Standard Recita-
tions," which she conned on Sundays. This morning, when
Thea and her two younger brothers sat down to breakfast,
Tillie was remonstrating with Gunner because he had not
learned a recitation assigned to him for George Washington
Day at school. The unmemorized text lay heavily on
Gunner's conscience as he attacked his buckwheat cakes
and sausage. He knew that Tillie was in the right, and
that "when the day came he would be ashamed of himself."

"I don't care," he muttered, stirring his coffee; "they
oughtn't to make boys speak. It's all right for girls. They