"Oh, papa," she cried, helplessly, "what IS the matter with you?"

"Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I can't die one way
I kin another. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen.
After I'm gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossing--
but I always called him Harry because he learned his trade
of me, Thekla, but he don't think of that now--and you tell him old
Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didn't
hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong 'bout that mantel.
Mind you tell him."

"Yes, papa," said Thekla, which was a surprise to Kurt;
he had dreaded a weak flood of tears and protestations.
But there were no tears, no protestations, only a long look at him
and a contraction of the eyebrows as if Thekla were trying to think
of something that eluded her. She placed the coffee on the tray
beside the other breakfast. For a while the room was very still.
Lieders could not see the look of resolve that finally smoothed
the perplexed lines out of his wife's kind, simple old face.
She rose. "Kurt," she said, "I don't guess you remember this is
our wedding-day; it was this day, eighteen year we was married."

"So!" said Lieders, "well, I was a bad bargain to you, Thekla;
after you nursed your father that was a cripple for twenty years,
I thought it would be easy with me; but I was a bad bargain."

"The Lord knows best about that," said Thekla, simply, "be it how it be,
you are the only man I ever had or will have, and I don't like you
starve yourself. Papa, say you don't kill yourself, to-day, and dat
you will eat your breakfast!"