"It's blackmail! I wouldn't pay it, if it weren't for my father sitting

waiting out there. But--go ahead. Hurry!"

She sat tapping her toe while Zolzac completed the stertorous task of

hogging the dumplings, then stretched, yawned, scratched, and covered

his merely dirty garments with overalls that were apparently woven of

processed mud. When he had gone to the barn for his team, his wife came

to Claire. On her drained face were the easy tears of the slave women.

"Oh, miss, I don't know vot I should do. My boys go on the public

school, and they speak American just so goot as you. Oh, I vant man lets

me luff America. But papa he says it is an Unsinn; you got the money,

he says, nobody should care if you are American or Old Country people. I

should vish I could ride once in an automobile! But--I am so 'shamed, so

'shamed that I must sit and see my Mann make this. Forty years I been

married to him, and pretty soon I die----"

Claire patted her hand. There was nothing to say to tragedy that had

outlived hope.

Adolph Zolzac clumped out to the highroad behind his vast,

rolling-flanked horses--so much cleaner and better fed than his wisp of

a wife. Claire followed him, and in her heart she committed murder and

was glad of it. While Mr. Boltwood looked out with mild wonder at

Claire's new friend, Zolzac hitched his team to the axle. It did not

seem possible that two horses could pull out the car where seventy

horsepower had fainted. But, easily, yawning and thinking about dinner,

the horses drew the wheels up on the mud-bank, out of the hole and---The harness broke, with a flying mess of straps and rope, and the car

plumped with perfect exactness back into its bed.




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