g to the back door instead of the front, and it was
with gaiety that she knocked on the ill-jointed screen door, which
flapped dismally in response.

"_Ja?_" from within.

She rapped again.

"_Hinein!_"

She opened the door on a kitchen, the highlight of which was a table
heaped with dishes of dumplings and salt pork. A shirt-sleeved man, all
covered with mustache and calm, sat by the table, and he kept right on
sitting as he inquired:

"Vell?"

"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 peop