pted so much. Of course, if I ever happen to want
to practice at night, that's always the night Anna chooses to go to bed
early."

"It's a darned shame, Thee, you didn't cop that room for yourself. I'm
sore at the PADRE about that. He ought to give you that room. You could
fix it up so pretty."

"I didn't want it, honest I didn't. Father would have let me have it. I
like my own room better. Somehow I can think better in a little room.
Besides, up there I am away from everybody, and I can read as late as I
please and nobody nags me."

"A growing girl needs lots of sleep," Ray providently remarked.

Thea moved restlessly on the buggy cushions. "They need other things
more," she muttered. "Oh, I forgot. I brought something to show you.
Look here, it came on my birthday. Wasn't it nice of him to remember?"
She took from her pocket a postcard, bent in the middle and folded, and
handed it to Ray. On it was a white dove, perched on a wreath of very
blue forget-me-nots, and "Birthday Greetings" in gold letters. Under
this was written, "From A. Wunsch."

Ray turned the card over, examined the postmark, and then began to
laugh.

"Concord, Kansas. He has my sympathy!"

"Why, is that a poor town?"

"It's the jumping-off place, no town at all. Some houses dumped down in
the middle of a cornfield. You get lost in the corn. Not even a saloon
to keep things going; sell whiskey without a license at the butcher
shop, beer on ice with the liver and beefsteak. I wouldn't stay there
over Sunday for a ten-dollar bill."

"Oh, dear! What do you suppose he's doing there? Maybe he just stopped
off there a few days to tune pianos," Thea suggested hopefully.

Ray gave her back the card. "He's headed in the wrong direction. What
does he want to get back into a grass country for? Now, there are lots
of good live towns down on the Santa Fe, and everybody down there is
musical. He could always get a job playing in saloons if he was
dead broke. I've figured out that I've got no years of my life to waste
in a Methodist country where they raise pork."

"We must stop on our way back and show this card to Mrs. Kohler. She
misses him so."

"By the way, Thee, I hear the old woman goes to church every Sunday to
hear you sing. Fritz tells me he has to wait till two o'clock for his
Sunday dinner these days. The church people ought to give you credit for
that, when they go for you."

Thea shook her head and spoke in a tone of resignation. "They'