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
A sad disgrace did once happen in the family. A little transient
terrier for whom Anna had found a home suddenly produced a crop of
pups. The new owners were certain that this Foxy had known no dog
since she was in their care. The good Anna held to it stoutly that her
Peter and her Rags were guiltless, and she made her statement with so
much heat that Foxy's owners were at last convinced that these results
were due to their neglect.
"You bad dog," Anna said to Peter that night, "you bad dog."
"Peter was the father of those pups," the good Anna explained to Miss
Mathilda, "and they look just like him too, and poor little Foxy,
they were so big that she could hardly have them, but Miss Mathilda, I
would never let those people know that Peter was so bad."
Periods of evil thinking came very regularly to Peter and to Rags and
to the visitors within their gates. At such times Anna would be
very busy and scold hard, and then too she always took great care to
seclude the bad dogs from each other whenever she had to leave the
house. Sometimes just to see how good it was that she had made them,
Anna would leave the room a little while and leave them all together,
and then she would suddenly come back. Back would slink all the
wicked-minded dogs at the sound of her hand upon the knob, and then
they would sit desolate in their corners like a lot of disappointed
children whose stolen sugar has been taken from them.
Innocent blind old Baby was the only one who preserved the dignity
becoming in a dog.
You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.
The good Anna was a small, spare, german woman, at this time about
forty years of age. Her face was worn, her cheeks were thin, her mouth
drawn and firm, and her light blue eyes were very bright. Sometimes
they were full of lightning and sometimes full of humor, but they were
always sharp and clear.
Her voice was a pleasant one, when she told the histories of bad Peter
and of Baby and of little Rags. Her voice was a high and piercing one
when she called to the teamsters and to the other wicked men, what
she wanted that should come to them, when she saw them beat a horse or
kick a dog. She did not belong to any society that could stop them
and she told them so most frankly, but her strained voice and her
glittering eyes, and her queer piercing german english first made them
afraid and then ashamed. They all knew too, that all the policemen
on the beat were her friends. These always respected and obeyed
Miss Annie, as they called her, and promptly attended to all of her
complaints.
For five years Anna managed the little house for Miss Mathilda. In
these five years there were four different under servants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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