"And you a helping of him! Just listen to that!"
cried the hearer indignantly.

"So I come here for to git you and Mr. Olsen to help me git
him down stairs, 'cause he is too heavy for me to lift,
and he is so mad he won't walk down himself."

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll call Carl. Carl! dost thou hear? come!
But did you dare to leave him Mrs. Lieders?" Part of the time she
spoke in English, part of the time in her own tongue, gliding from
one to another, and neither party observing the transition.

Mrs. Lieders wiped her eyes, saying: "Oh, yes, Danke schon, I aint
afraid 'cause I tied him with the rope, righd good, so he don't got
no chance to move. He was make faces at me all the time I tied him."
At the remembrance, the tears welled anew.

Mrs. Olsen, a little bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her
big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indignant sympathy.

"Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean acting man!" seemed to her
the most natural expression; but the wife fired, at once.

"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."