Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
Mrs. Haydon quick, as soon as she saw Lena, began to scold her for
keeping her aunt waiting so long for her, and for not coming in all
the week to see her, to see if her aunt should need her, and so her
aunt had to send a boy to tell her. But it was easy, even for Lena,
to see that her aunt was not really angry with her. It wasn't Lena's
fault, went on Mrs. Haydon, that everything was going to happen all
right for her. Mrs. Haydon was very tired taking all this trouble
for her, and when Lena couldn't even take trouble to come and see
her aunt, to see if she needed anything to tell her. But Mrs. Haydon
really never minded things like that when she could do things for
anybody. She was tired now, all the trouble she had been taking to
make things right for Lena, but perhaps now Lena heard it she would
learn a little to be thankful to her. "You get all ready to be married
Tuesday, Lena, you hear me," said Mrs. Haydon to her. "You come here
Tuesday morning and I have everything all ready for you. You wear your
new dress I got you, and your hat with all them flowers on it, and
you be very careful coming you don't get your things all dirty, you so
careless all the time, Lena, and not thinking, and you act sometimes
you never got no head at all on you. You go home now, and you tell
your Mrs. Aldrich that you leave her Tuesday. Don't you go forgetting
now, Lena, anything I ever told you what you should do to be careful.
You be a good girl, now Lena. You get married Tuesday to Herman
Kreder." And that was all Lena ever knew of what had happened all this
week to Herman Kreder. Lena forgot there was anything to know about
it. She was really to be married Tuesday, and her Aunt Mathilda said
she was a good girl, and now there was no disgrace left upon her.
Lena now fell back into the way she always had of being always dreamy
and not there, the way she always had been, except for the few days
she was so excited, because she had been left by a man the very day
she was to have been married. Lena was a little nervous all these last
days, but she did not think much about what it meant for her to be
married.
Herman Kreder was not so content about it. He was quiet and was sullen
and he knew he could not help it. He knew now he just had to let
himself get married. It was not that Herman did not like Lena Mainz.
She was as good as any other girl could be for him. She was a little
better perhaps than other girls he saw, she was so very quiet, but
Herman did not like to always have to have a girl around him. Herman
had always done everything that his mother and his father wanted. His
father had found him in New York, where Herman had gone to be with his
married sister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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