"It's blackmail! I wouldn't pay it, if it weren't for my father sitting
waiting out there. But--go ahead. Hurry!"
She sat tapping her toe while Zolzac completed the stertorous task of
hogging the dumplings, then stretched, yawned, scratched, and covered
his merely dirty garments with overalls that were apparently woven of
processed mud. When he had gone to the barn for his team, his wife came
to Claire. On her drained face were the easy tears of the slave women.
"Oh, miss, I don't know vot I should do. My boys go on the public
school, and they speak American just so goot as you. Oh, I vant man lets
me luff America. But papa he says it is an Unsinn; you got the money,
he says, nobody should care if you are American or Old Country people. I
should vish I could ride once in an automobile! But--I am so 'shamed, so
'shamed that I must sit and see my Mann make this. Forty years I been
married to him, and pretty soon I die----"
Claire patted her hand. There was nothing to say to tragedy that had
outlived hope.
Adolph Zolzac clumped out to the highroad behind his vast,
rolling-flanked horses--so much cleaner and better fed than his wisp of
a wife. Claire followed him, and in her heart she committed murder and
was glad of it. While Mr. Boltwood looked out with mild wonder at
Claire's new friend, Zolzac hitched his team to the axle. It did not
seem possible that two horses could pull out the car where seventy
horsepower had fainted. But, easily, yawning and thinking about dinner,
the horses drew the wheels up on the mud-bank, out of the hole and---The harness broke, with a flying mess of straps and rope, and the car
plumped with perfect exactness back into its bed.