Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/341

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tender tonight as he rushed in and out of the little cottage; Hulda, his wife, was more excited. She was large and her flesh was soft. She stumbled from the cottage to the wagon, lumbering, panting—turning a moment to look at the flames advancing and then with groans of fresh distress, heaving toward the cottage again.

But once as Hulda turned cottageward, she cried out sharply, "Oh, Adolph! Der pain! Der pain!" then thrust a hand to her side and sat down upon the curb. Adolph, as he wrestled with his loading, noted his wife sitting down, and that she appeared to be in distress. Before he could get to her, she was lying down on the strip of grass between the wooden walk and the wooden curb—both of which would presently take fire and burn.

"Mama!" he called. "Mama! Don't lay down dere. I get you a bed to lay on!" But when Salzberg knelt beside her and felt tenderly over that large, soft body, lo it was pulseless.

"Mama!" he called so loudly that she must hear. "Mama! I get you up from dere."

But he knew she did not hear him. Frantically he dumped the part of their houschold effects from the old wagon and made a superhuman effort to lift the body of his wife to the place he had prepared for it, talking to it sobbingly all the while. "I lift you up dere, mama. I haf you up dere in a jiff!" But he was not equal to the task. And everybody was busy—too busy with his own concerns, too busy with bird cages and green onyx clocks and family heirlooms, to consider the particular embarrassment of a broken-hearted man entirely undemonstrative in his grief. But there came a step