Three Lives | Page 8

face,
with pleasant, empty, grey-blue eyes, and heavy sleepy lids.
Behind Miss Mary was the little Jane, nervous and jerky with
excitement as she saw Anna come into the room.
"Miss Mary," Anna began. She had stopped just within the door, her
body and her face stiff with repression, her teeth closed hard and the

white lights flashing sharply in the pale, clean blue of her eyes. Her
bearing was full of the strange coquetry of anger and of fear, the
stiffness, the bridling, the suggestive movement underneath the
rigidness of forced control, all the queer ways the passions have to
show themselves all one.
"Miss Mary," the words came slowly with thick utterance and with
jerks, but always firm and strong. "Miss Mary, I can't stand it any more
like this. When you tell me anything to do, I do it. I do everything I can
and you know I work myself sick for you. The blue dressings in your
room makes too much work to have for summer. Miss Jane don't know
what work is. If you want to do things like that I go away."
Anna stopped still. Her words had not the strength of meaning they
were meant to have, but the power in the mood of Anna's soul
frightened and awed Miss Mary through and through.
Like in all large and helpless women, Miss Mary's heart beat weakly in
the soft and helpless mass it had to govern. Little Jane's excitements
had already tried her strength. Now she grew pale and fainted quite
away.
"Miss Mary!" cried Anna running to her mistress and supporting all her
helpless weight back in the chair. Little Jane, distracted, flew about as
Anna ordered, bringing smelling salts and brandy and vinegar and
water and chafing poor Miss Mary's wrists.
Miss Mary slowly opened her mild eyes. Anna sent the weeping little
Jane out of the room. She herself managed to get Miss Mary quiet on
the couch.
There was never a word more said about blue dressings.
Anna had conquered, and a few days later little Jane gave her a green
parrot to make peace.
For six more years little Jane and Anna lived in the same house. They
were careful and respectful to each other to the end.

Anna liked the parrot very well. She was fond of cats too and of horses,
but best of all animals she loved the dog and best of all dogs, little
Baby, the first gift from her friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman.
The widow Mrs. Lehntman was the romance in Anna's life.
Anna met her first at the house of her half brother, the baker, who had
known the late Mr. Lehntman, a small grocer, very well.
Mrs. Lehntman had been for many years a midwife. Since her
husband's death she had herself and two young children to support.
Mrs. Lehntman was a good looking woman. She had a plump well
rounded body, clear olive skin, bright dark eyes and crisp black curling
hair. She was pleasant, magnetic, efficient and good. She was very
attractive, very generous and very amiable.
She was a few years older than our good Anna, who was soon entirely
subdued by her magnetic, sympathetic charm.
Mrs. Lehntman in her work loved best to deliver young girls who were
in trouble. She would take these into her own house and care for them
in secret, till they could guiltlessly go home or back to work, and then
slowly pay her the money for their care. And so through this new friend
Anna led a wider and more entertaining life, and often she used up her
savings in helping Mrs. Lehntman through those times when she was
giving very much more than she got.
It was through Mrs. Lehntman that Anna met Dr. Shonjen who
employed her when at last it had to be that she must go away from her
Miss Mary Wadsmith.
During the last years with her Miss Mary, Anna's health was very bad,
as indeed it always was from that time on until the end of her strong
life.
Anna was a medium sized, thin, hard working, worrying woman.

She had always had bad headaches and now they came more often and
more wearing.
Her face grew thin, more bony and more worn, her skin stained itself
pale yellow, as it does with working sickly women, and the clear blue
of her eyes went pale.
Her back troubled her a good deal, too. She was always tired at her
work and her temper grew more difficult and fretful.
Miss Mary Wadsmith often tried to make Anna see a little to herself,
and get a doctor, and the little Jane, now blossoming into a pretty,
sweet young woman, did her best to make Anna do things for her