Part 2

“No, he is not a mean man,” she cried, “no, Freda Olsen, he is not a mean man at all! There aint nowhere a better man than my man; and Carl Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always buys a whole ham and a whole barrel of flour, and never less than a dollar of sugar at a time! And he never gits drunk nor he never gives me any bad talk. It was only he got this wanting to kill himself on him, sometimes.”

“Well, I guess I'll go put on my things,” said Mrs. Olsen, wisely declining to defend her position. “You set right still and warm yourself, and we'll be back in a minute.”

Indeed, it was hardly more than that time before both Carl Olsen, who worked in the same furniture factory as Kurt Lieders, and was a comely and after-witted giant, appeared with Mrs. Olsen ready for the street.

He nodded at Mrs. Lieders and made a gurgling noise in his throat, expected to convey sympathy. Then, he coughed and said that he was ready, and they started.

Feeling further expression demanded, Mrs. Olsen asked: “How many times has he done it, Mrs. Lieders?”

Mrs. Lieders was trotting along, her anxious eyes on the house in the distance, especially on the garret windows. “Three times,” she answered, not removing her eyes; “onct he tooked Rough on Rats and I found it out and I put some apple butter in the place of it, and he kept wondering and wondering how he didn't feel notings, and after awhile I got him off the notion, that time. He wasn't mad at me; he just said: 'Well, I do it some other time. You see!' but he promised to wait till I got the spring house cleaning over, so he could shake the carpets for me; and by and by he got feeling better. He was mad at the boss and that made him feel bad. The next time it was the same, that time he jumped into the cistern----”

“Yes, I know,” said Olsen, with a half grin, “I pulled him out.”

“It was the razor he wanted,” the wife continued, “and when he come home and says he was going to leave the shop and he aint never going back there, and gets out his razor and sharps it, I knowed what that meant and I told him I got to have some bluing and wouldn't he go and get it? and he says, 'You won't git another husband run so free on your errands, Thekla,' and I says I don't want none; and when he was gone I hid the razor and he couldn't find it, but that didn't mad him, he didn't say notings; and when I went to git the supper he walked out in the yard and jumped into the cistern, and I heard the splash and looked in and there he was trying to git his head under, and I called, 'For the Lord's sake, papa! For the Lord's sake!' just like that. And I fished for him with the pole that stood there and he was sorry and caught hold of it and give in, and I rested the pole agin the side cause I wasn't strong enough to h'ist him out; and he held on whilest I run for help----”

“And I got the ladder and he clum out,” said the giant with another grin of recollection, “he was awful wet!”

“That was a month ago,” said the wife, solemnly.

“He sharped the razor onct,” said Mrs. Lieders, “but he said it was for to shave him, and I got him to promise to let the barber shave him sometime, instead. Here, Mrs. Olsen, you go righd in, the door aint locked.”

By this time they were at the house door. They passed in and ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow, ladder-like flight to the garret. Involuntarily they had paused to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet, not a sound of movement, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing. The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on her heart.

“Guess he's trying to scare us by keeping quiet!” said Olsen, cheerfully, and he stumbled up the stairs, in advance. “Thunder!” he exclaimed, on the last stair, “well, we aint any too quick.”

In fact Carl had nearly fallen over the master of the house, that enterprising self-destroyer having contrived, pinioned as he was, to roll over to the very brink of the stair well, with the plain intent to break his neck by plunging headlong.

In the dim light all that they could see was a small, old man whose white hair was strung in wisps over his purple face, whose deep set eyes glared like the eyes of a rat in a trap, and whose very elbows and knees expressed in their cramps the fury of an outraged soul. When he saw the new-comers he shut his eyes and his jaws.

“Well, Mr. Lieders,” said Olsen, mildly, “I guess you better git down-stairs. Kin I help you up?”

“No,” said Lieders.

“Will I give you an arm to lean on?”

“No.”

“Won't you go at all, Mr. Lieders?”

“No.”

Olsen shook his head. “I hate to trouble you, Mr. Lieders,” said he in his slow, undecided tones, “please excuse me,” with which he gathered up the little man into his strong arms and slung him over his shoulders, as easily as he would sling a sack of meal. It was a vent for Mrs. Olsen's bubbling indignation to make a dive for Lieders's heels and hold them, while Carl backed down-stairs. But Lieders did not make the least resistance. He allowed them to carry him into the room indicated by his wife, and to lay him bound on the plump feather bed. It was not his bedroom but the sacred “spare room,” and the bed was part of its luxury. Thekla ran in, first, to remove the embroidered pillow shams and the dazzling, silken “crazy quilt” that was her choicest possession.

Safely in the bed, Lieders opened his eyes and looked from one face to the other, his lip curling. “You can't keep me this way all the time. I can do it in spite of you,” said he.

“Well, I think you had ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Lieders!” Mrs. Olsen burst out, in a tremble between wrath and exertion, shaking her little, plump fist at him.

But the placid Carl only nodded, as in sympathy, saying, “Well, I am sorry you feel so bad, Mr. Lieders. I guess we got to go now.”

Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would have liked to exhort Lieders further; but she shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband in silence.

“I wished you'd stay to breakfast, now you're here,” Thekla urged out of her imperious hospitality; had Kurt been lying there dead, the next meal must have been offered, just the same. “I know, you aint got time to git Mr. Olsen his breakfast, Freda, before he has got to go to the shops, and my tea-kettle is boiling now, and the coffee'll be ready--I GUESS you had better stay.”

But Mrs. Olsen seconded her husband's denial, and there was nothing left Thekla but to see them to the door. No sooner did she return than Lieders spoke. “Aint you going to take off them ropes?” said he.