"But you'll git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't
get the ropes off, soon, papa!"

"I know that!"

He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping
back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side
and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high
forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there
was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person,
as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife.
With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a
dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places
and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker
in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also,
an incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops.
Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing.
He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was
he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success.
Lieders's workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail,
a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its
own price. The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name.
No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching
conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming
over sideboards and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side
of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crotchets,
and as unpracti-cal as the Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense,
and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after
orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer;
if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig,