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
"This will never do Molly," Miss Mathilda said sternly, in her
deepest, firmest tones, "Anna is the head of the kitchen and you must
either obey her or leave."
"I don't want to leave you," whimpered melancholy Molly. "Well Molly
then try and do better," answered Miss Mathilda, keeping a good stern
front, and backing quickly from the kitchen.
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Miss Mathilda, as she went back up the stairs.
Miss Mathilda's attempt to make peace between the constantly
contending women in the kitchen had no real effect. They were very
soon as bitter as before.
At last it was decided that Molly was to go away. Molly went away to
work in a factory in the town, and she went to live with an old woman
in the slums, a very bad old woman Anna said.
Anna was never easy in her mind about the fate of Molly. Sometimes she
would see or hear of her. Molly was not well, her cough was worse, and
the old woman really was a bad one.
After a year of this unwholesome life, Molly was completely broken
down. Anna then again took her in charge. She brought her from her
work and from the woman where she lived, and put her in a hospital to
stay till she was well. She found a place for her as nursemaid to a
little girl out in the country, and Molly was at last established and
content.
Molly had had, at first, no regular successor. In a few months it was
going to be the summer and Miss Mathilda would be gone away, and old
Katie would do very well to come in every day and help Anna with her
work.
Old Katy was a heavy, ugly, short and rough old german woman, with a
strange distorted german-english all her own. Anna was worn out now
with her attempt to make the younger generation do all that it should
and rough old Katy never answered back, and never wanted her own
way. No scolding or abuse could make its mark on her uncouth and aged
peasant hide. She said her "Yes, Miss Annie," when an answer had to
come, and that was always all that she could say.
"Old Katy is just a rough old woman, Miss Mathilda," Anna said, "but
I think I keep her here with me. She can work and she don't give me
trouble like I had with Molly all the time."
Anna always had a humorous sense from this old Katy's twisted peasant
english, from the roughness on her tongue of buzzing s's and from the
queer ways of her brutish servile humor. Anna could not let old Katy
serve at table--old Katy was too coarsely made from natural earth for
that--and so Anna had all this to do herself and that she never liked,
but even then this simple rough old creature was pleasanter to her
than any of the upstart young.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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