that a child must have her hair curled every day and must
play in public. Mrs. Kronborg knew it meant that Thea
must practice four hours a day. A child with talent must
be kept at the piano, just as a child with measles must be
kept under the blankets. Mrs. Kronborg and her three
sisters had all studied piano, and all sang well, but none of
them had talent. Their father had played the oboe in an
orchestra in Sweden, before he came to America to better
his fortunes. He had even known Jenny Lind. A child with
talent had to be kept at the piano; so twice a week in sum-
mer and once a week in winter Thea went over the gulch to
the Kohlers', though the Ladies' Aid Society thought it
was not proper for their preacher's daughter to go "where
there was so much drinking." Not that the Kohler sons
ever so much as looked at a glass of beer. They were
ashamed of their old folks and got out into the world as
fast as possible; had their clothes made by a Denver tailor
and their necks shaved up under their hair and forgot
the past. Old Fritz and Wunsch, however, indulged in a
friendly bottle pretty often. The two men were like com-
rades; perhaps the bond between them was the glass wherein
lost hopes are found; perhaps it was common memories of
another country; perhaps it was the grapevine in the gar-
den--knotty, fibrous shrub, full of homesickness and senti-
ment, which the Germans have carried around the world
with them.

As Thea approached the house she peeped between the
pink sprays of the tamarisk hedge and saw the Professor
and Mrs. Kohler in the garden, spading and raking. The