This was the last touch. "Gracious, Thekla," cried Kurt,
"are you going to market this day? It is the coldest
day this winter!"

"Oh, I don't mind," replied Thekla, nervously. Then she had wrapped
a scarf about her and gone out while he was getting into his own coat,
and conning a proffer to go in her stead.

"Oh, well, Thekla she aint such a fool like she looks!"
he observed to the cat, "say, pussy, WAS it you out yestiddy?"

The cat only blinked her yellow eyes and purred.
She knew that she had not been out, last night.
Not any better than her mistress, however, who at this moment
was hailing a street-car.

The street-car did not land her anywhere near a market;
it whirled her past the lines of low wooden houses into the big
brick shops with their arched windows and terra-cotta ornaments
that showed the ambitious architecture of a growing Western town,
past these into mills and factories and smoke-stained chimneys.
Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her,
her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great
building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz.
She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen.
"Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing," said she breathlessly.

"There ain't noding ----"

"No, Gott sei dank', but I got to see him."