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Show 43 kitchen door, cold sweat mingled with the tears on his face. "Mother of God!" Maggie Rose leaped from her chair, scattering the potful of peas she'd been shelling. "What happened to you?" Grimacing with pain, Karl told about the plumbers, the cellar door, the boiling lead. In some surprise, he noticed he was still clutching the package of meat; he set it on the table. Kathleen and Hunnie had come running at the commotion, and started wide-eyed at the lead that fused Karl's toes with a solid metal coating. "Oh, my darlin*, we'll have to get it off, and it's going to hurt something awful," Maggie Rose cried. "Here, sit on the chair. I'll get the dirt off your foot first." She set a tin basin in the sink and half-filled it from the single faucet, then added hot water from a kettle that always stood on the back of the stove. With a washrag and soap she lathered Karl's soot-stained sole, then gently lifted his foot into the basin to rinse it. Mercifully, the layer of lead kept the soap and water from reaching his burned skin. "Here, lift your foot onto the table," his mother told him. Starting with his little toe, she began to pull away the hardened lead, wincing because the skin came off with it. Karl let out a cry, and Hunnie began to whimper. "Hunnie shouldn't be seeing this," Maggie Rose said. "Kathleen, take him up the alley to Kratzers' and ask Mrs. Kratzer if he can stay there for an hour or two." After they'd gone, Maggie Rose went to work on Karl's other toes. The removal of the lead was far more painful than the scalding |