sn't know what to do with
them all. Come up this afternoon. Just tell Mrs. Archie I sent you.
Bring a big basket and pick till you are tired."

When she got home Thea told her mother that she didn't want to go,
because she didn't like Mrs. Archie.

"She is certainly one queer woman," Mrs. Kronborg assented, "but he's
asked you so often, I guess you'll have to go this time. She won't bite
you."

After dinner Thea took a basket, put Thor in his baby buggy, and set out
for Dr. Archie's house at the other end of town. As soon as she came
within sight of the house, she slackened her pace. She approached it
very slowly, stopping often to pick dandelions and sand-peas for Thor to
crush up in his fist.

It was his wife's custom, as soon as Dr. Archie left the house in the
morning, to shut all the doors and windows to keep the dust out, and to
pull down the shades to keep the sun from fading the carpets. She
thought, too, that neighbors were less likely to drop in if the house
was closed up. She was one of those people who are stingy without motive
or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She must have known
that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more extravagant than
he would have been had she made him comfortable. He never came home for
lunch, because she gave him such miserable scraps and shreds of food. No
matter how much milk he bought, he could never get thick cream for his
strawberries. Even when he watched his wife lift it from the milk in
smooth, ivory-colored blankets, she managed, by some sleight-of-hand, to
dilute it before it got to the breakfast table. The butcher's favorite
joke was about the kind of meat he sold Mrs. Archie. She felt no
interest in food herself, and she hated to prepare it. She liked nothing
better than to have Dr. Archie go to Denver for a few days--he often
went chiefly because he was hungry--and to be left alone to eat canned
salmon and to keep the house shut up from morning until night.

Mrs. Archie would not have a servant because, she said, "they ate too
much and broke too much"; she even said they knew too much. She used
what mind she had in devising shifts to minimize her housework. She used
to tell her neighbors that if there were no men, there would be no
housework. When Mrs. Archie was first married, she had been always in a
panic for fear she would have children. Now that her apprehensions on
that score had grown paler, she was almost as much afraid of having