boss is all right."

"Yes, papa, I got my mind made up"--like most sluggish spirits there was
an immense momentum about Thekla's mind, once get it fairly started it
was not to be diverted--"you never killed yourself before you used to
git mad at the boss. You was afraid he would send you away; and now you
have sent yourself away you don't want to live, 'cause you do not know
how you can git along without the shop. But you want to get back, you
want to get back more as you want to kill yourself. Yes, papa, I know,
I know where you did used to go, nights. Now"--she changed her speech
unconsciously to the tongue of her youth--"it is not fair, it is not
fair to me that thou shouldst treat me like that, thou dost belong to
me, also; so I say, my Kurt, wilt thou make a bargain with me? If I
shall get thee back thy place wilt thou promise me never to kill thyself
any more?"

Lieders had not once looked up at her during the slow, difficult
sentences with their half choked articulation; but he was experiencing
some strange emotions, and one of them was a novel respect for his wife.
All he said was: "'Taint no use talking. I won't never ask him to take
me back, once."

"Well, you aint asking of him. _I_ ask him. I try to git you back,
once!"

"I tell you, it aint no use; I know the boss, he aint going to be
letting womans talk him over; no, he's a good man, he knows how to work
his business himself!"

"But would you promise me, Kurt?"

Lieders's eyes blurred with a mild and dreamy mist; he sighed softly.
"Thekla, you can't see how it is. It is like you are tied up, if I don't
can do that; if I can then it is always that I am free, free to go, free
to stay. And for you, Thekla, it is the same."

Thekla's mild eyes flashed. "I don't believe you would like it so you
wake up in the morning and find ME hanging up in the kitchen by the
clothes-line!"

Lieders had the air of one considering deeply. Then he gave Thekla one
of the surprises of her life; he rose from his chair, he walked in his
shuffling, unheeled slippers across the room to where the old woman sat;
he put one arm on the back of the chair and stiffly bent over her and
kissed her.

"Lieber Herr Je!" gasped Thekla.

"Then I shall go, too, pretty quick, that is all, mamma," said he.

Thekla wiped her eyes. A little pause fell between them, and in it they
may have both remembered vanished, half-forgotten days when life had
looked differently to them, when they h