Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena — John Shaqi
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
All of Anna's spare hours in these early days she spent with her
friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman. Mrs. Lehntman lived with her two
children in a small house in the same part of the town as Dr. Shonjen.
The older of these two children was a girl named Julia and was now
about thirteen years of age. This Julia Lehntman was an unattractive
girl enough, harsh featured, dull and stubborn as had been her heavy
german father. Mrs. Lehntman did not trouble much with her, but gave
her always all she wanted that she had, and let the girl do as she
liked. This was not from indifference or dislike on the part of Mrs.
Lehntman, it was just her usual way.
Her second child was a boy, two years younger than his sister, a
bright, pleasant, cheery fellow, who too, did what he liked with his
money and his time. All this was so with Mrs. Lehntman because she
had so much in her head and in her house that clamoured for her
concentration and her time.
This slackness and neglect in the running of the house, and the
indifference in this mother for the training of her young was very
hard for our good Anna to endure. Of course she did her best to scold,
to save for Mrs. Lehntman, and to put things in their place the way
they ought to be.
Even in the early days when Anna was first won by the glamour of
Mrs. Lehntman's brilliancy and charm, she had been uneasy in Mrs.
Lehntman's house with a need of putting things to rights. Now that the
two children growing up were of more importance in the house, and now
that long acquaintance had brushed the dazzle out of Anna's eyes, she
began to struggle to make things go here as she thought was right.
She watched and scolded hard these days to make young Julia do the way
she should. Not that Julia Lehntman was pleasant in the good Anna's
sight, but it must never be that a young girl growing up should have
no one to make her learn to do things right.
The boy was easier to scold, for scoldings never sank in very deep,
and indeed he liked them very well for they brought with them new
things to eat, and lively teasing, and good jokes.
Julia, the girl, grew very sullen with it all, and very often won her
point, for after all Miss Annie was no relative of hers and had no
business coming there and making trouble all the time. Appealing to
the mother was no use. It was wonderful how Mrs. Lehntman could listen
and not hear, could answer and yet not decide, could say and do what
she was asked and yet leave things as they were before.
One day it got almost too bad for even Anna's friendship to bear out.
"Well, Julia, is your mamma out?" Anna asked, one Sunday summer
afternoon, as she came into the Lehntman house.
Anna looked very well this day. She was always careful in her dress
and sparing of new clothes. She made herself always fulfill her own
ideal of how a girl should look when she took her Sundays out. Anna
knew so well the kind of ugliness appropriate to each rank in life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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