"My car--my automobile--has been stuck in the mud. A bad driver, I'm afraid! I wonder if you would be so good as to----" "I usually get t'ree dollars, but I dunno as I vant to do it for less than four. Today I ain'd feelin' very goot," grumbled the golden-hearted. Claire was aware that a woman whom she had not noticed--so much smaller than the dumplings, so much less vigorous than the salt pork was she--was speaking: "_Aber_, papa, dot's a shame you sharge de poor young lady dot, when she drive by _sei_ self. Vot she t'ink of de Sherman people?" The farmer merely grunted. To Claire, "Yuh, four dollars. Dot's what I usually charge sometimes." "Usually? Do you mean to say that you leave that hole there in the road right along--that people keep on trying to avoid it and get stuck as I was? Oh! If I were an official----" "Vell, I dunno, I don't guess I run my place to suit you smart alecks----" "Papa! How you talk on the young lady! Make shame!" "--from the city. If you don't like it, you stay _bei_ Mineapolis! I haul you out for t'ree dollars and a half. Everybody pay dot. Last mont' I make forty-five dollars. They vos all glad to pay. They say I help them fine. I don't see vot you're kickin' about! Oh, these vimmins!" "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. CHAPTER III A YOUNG MAN IN A RAINCOAT