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
Before very long, Lena had her baby. He was a good, healthy little
boy, the baby. Herman cared very much to have the baby. When Lena was
a little stronger he took a house next door to the old couple, so he
and his own family could eat and sleep and do the way they wanted.
This did not seem to make much change now for Lena. She was just the
same as when she was waiting with her baby. She just dragged around
and was careless with her clothes and all lifeless, and she acted
always and lived on just as if she had no feeling. She always did
everything regular with the work, the way she always had had to do it,
but she never got back any spirit in her. Herman was always good and
kind, and always helped her with her working. He did everything he
knew to help her. He always did all the active new things in the house
and for the baby. Lena did what she had to do the way she always had
been taught it. She always just kept going now with her working, and
she was always careless, and dirty, and a little dazed, and lifeless.
Lena never got any better in herself of this way of being that she had
had ever since she had been married.
Mrs. Haydon never saw any more of her niece, Lena. Mrs. Haydon had now
so much trouble with her own house, and her daughters getting married,
and her boy, who was growing up, and who always was getting so much
worse to manage. She knew she had done right by Lena. Herman Kreder
was a good man, she would be glad to get one so good, sometimes,
for her own daughters, and now they had a home to live in together,
separate from the old people, who had made their trouble for them.
Mrs. Haydon felt she had done very well by her niece, Lena, and she
never thought now she needed any more to go and see her. Lena would do
very well now without her aunt to trouble herself any more about her.
The good german cook who had always scolded, still tried to do her
duty like a mother to poor Lena. It was very hard now to do right by
Lena. Lena never seemed to hear now what anyone was saying to her.
Herman was always doing everything he could to help her. Herman
always, when he was home, took good care of the baby. Herman loved
to take care of his baby. Lena never thought to take him out or to do
anything she didn't have to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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