“I built this here house before I was twenty-one or you was born—I did. My mother she says, says she: ‘Bill, soon it will be a man in the house. Don’t you think you’d better git the house? You and Emmy’s mighty thick.’ I took the hint. And, on the morning I got twenty-one, here I was! And, begosh, there”—he pointed to the other side of the fireplace—“was Emmy! She and me done it all—together. She drawed the plan. You see them bricks that ain’t the right color? Emmy laid ’em! Yessir! With her little hands—and a trowel—and mortar! They are all right except the color. I says, says I, ‘Take ’em right out!’ But she threw the mortar on me, and it went in my hair and eyes, and she had to wash it out—that’s why they was never changed. And I’m glad they wasn’t. Whenever I look at ’em—one of ’em’s a little loose—I kin see my Emmy laying ’em! Well, you never see nothing as nice, I’ll bet you, as Emmy laying bricks! Old Gaertner made the bricks—out there where the boys swim now. That was all clay once. None of the ground clods like you git in bricks nowadays! It’s too long for you to remember, I expect. You not more’n sixty-five or so.” Then his mind flew back to the cause of his rebellion, and he was all the more angry that he had forgotten it in thinking of Emmy. “And now you want to boss me! I won’t stand it. Git out! You’re just a spring chicken.” “You shut up!” cried Mrs. Krantz. At this anathema he gasped in fresh fear. “Betsy,” he said humbly when he could speak, “you’re too young to talk to me like that!” “I’m going on seventy!” snapped Mrs. Krantz; which boast was untrue. “So?” Old Liebereich caught the insincerity and turned to inspect her. “’Tain’t so!” he said, with old-fashioned passion against a lie. “You think you kin shut me up that-a-way and I’ll go to bed easy! You git right out!” “If you don’t take keer I will!” cried the exasperated housekeeper. “Let’s see what the Lord says!” She closed her eyes and put a finger on a text of the Bible which lay open there, meaning, if it were favorable, to take him at his word and leave the consequences to heaven. But what she read was: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” II EMMY AND HE WERE NEVER APART When seven o’clock came, old Liebereich, unrebuked, still reviled her and her housekeeping. For the Scriptures had spoken and the woman knew her duty. She did it. And not a word delayed or hastened by an instant old Liebereich’s relentless progress to bed. Even when he was there he said: “You can’t keep no house! My Emmy kin beat you all! Look at that!” It was an andiron which had become dull. “When my Emmy gits back you kin go to grass!” But the last word was mumbled in the delicious sleep Mrs. Krantz had brought him.