struggle.

XIV

"Mother," said Peter Kronborg to his wife one morning about two weeks
after Wunsch's departure, "how would you like to drive out to Copper
Hole with me to-day?"

Mrs. Kronborg said she thought she would enjoy the drive. She put on her
gray cashmere dress and gold watch and chain, as befitted a minister's
wife, and while her husband was dressing she packed a black oilcloth
satchel with such clothing as she and Thor would need overnight.

Copper Hole was a settlement fifteen miles northwest of Moonstone where
Mr. Kronborg preached every Friday evening. There was a big spring there
and a creek and a few irrigating ditches. It was a community of
discouraged agriculturists who had disastrously experimented with dry
farming. Mr. Kronborg always drove out one day and back the next,
spending the night with one of his parishioners. Often, when the weather
was fine, his wife accompanied him. To-day they set out from home after
the midday meal, leaving Tillie in charge of the house. Mrs. Kronborg's
maternal feeling was always garnered up in the baby, whoever the baby
happened to be. If she had the baby with her, the others could look out
for themselves. Thor, of course, was not, accurately speaking, a baby
any longer. In the matter of nourishment he was quite independent of his
mother, though this independence had not been won without a struggle.
Thor was conservative in all things, and the whole family had anguished
with him when he was being weaned. Being the youngest, he was still the
baby for Mrs. Kronborg, though he was nearly four years old and sat up
boldly on her lap this afternoon, holding on to the ends of the lines
and shouting "'mup, 'mup, horsey." His father watched him affectionately
and hummed hymn tunes in the jovial way that was sometimes such a trial
to Thea.

Mrs. Kronborg was enjoying the sunshine and the brilliant sky and all
the faintly marked features of the dazzling, monotonous landscape. She
had a rather unusual capacity for getting the flavor of places and of
people. Although she was so enmeshed in family cares most of the time,
she could emerge serene when she was away from them. For a mother of
seven, she had a singularly unprejudiced point of view. She was,
moreover, a fatalist, and as she did not attempt to direct things beyond
her control, she found a good deal of time to enjoy the ways of man and
nature.

When they were well upon their road, out where the first lean pas