n live in the barn, her can," Thor drawled indifferently.

Thea laughed and squeezed his hand. She always liked his sturdy
matter-of-factness. Boys ought to be like that, she thought.

When they reached the depot, Mr. Kronborg paced the platform somewhat
ceremoniously with his daughter. Any member of his flock would have
gathered that he was giving her good counsel about meeting the
temptations of the world. He did, indeed, begin to admonish her not to
forget that talents come from our Heavenly Father and are to be used for
his glory, but he cut his remarks short and looked at his watch. He
believed that Thea was a religious girl, but when she looked at him with
that intent, that passionately inquiring gaze which used to move even
Wunsch, Mr. Kronborg suddenly felt his eloquence fail. Thea was like her
mother, he reflected; you couldn't put much sentiment across with her.
As a usual thing, he liked girls to be a little more responsive. He
liked them to blush at his compliments; as Mrs. Kronborg candidly said,
"Father could be very soft with the girls." But this morning he was
thinking that hard-headedness was a reassuring quality in a daughter who
was going to Chicago alone.

Mr. Kronborg believed that big cities were places where people went to
lose their identity and to be wicked. He himself, when he was a student
at the Seminary--he coughed and opened his watch again. He knew, of
course, that a great deal of business went on in Chicago, that there was
an active Board of Trade, and that hogs and cattle were slaughtered
there. But when, as a young man, he had stopped over in Chicago, he had
not interested himself in the commercial activities of the city. He
remembered it as a place full of cheap shows and dance halls and boys
from the country who were behaving disgustingly.

Dr. Archie drove up to the station about ten minutes before the train
was due. His man tied the ponies and stood holding the doctor's
alligator-skin bag--very elegant, Thea thought it. Mrs. Kronborg did not
burden the doctor with warnings and cautions. She said again that she
hoped he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay, where they had good
beds, and she hoped the landlady would be a woman who'd had children of
her own. "I don't go much on old maids looking after girls," she
remarked as she took a pin out of her own hat and thrust it into Thea's
blue turban. "You'll be sure to lose your hatpins on the train, Thea.
It's better to have an e