and perhaps its better if they don't have any
children, and then Miss Mathilda you know there is Mrs. Lehntman. You
know she regular adopted little Johnny just so she could pay out some
more money just as if she didn't have trouble enough taking care of
her own children. No Miss Mathilda, I never see how people can do
things so. People don't seem to have no sense of right or wrong or
anything these days Miss Mathilda, they are just careless and thinking
always of themselves and how they can always have a happy time. No,
Miss Mathilda I don't see how people can go on and do things so."

The good Anna could not understand the careless and bad ways of all
the world and always she grew bitter with it all. No, not one of them
had any sense of what was the right way for them to do.

Anna's past life was now drawing to an end. Her old blind dog, Baby,
was sick and like to die. Baby had been the first gift from her friend
the widow, Mrs. Lehntman in the old days when Anna had been with Miss
Mary Wadsmith, and when these two women had first come together.

Through all the years of change, Baby had stayed with the good Anna,
growing old and fat and blind and lazy. Baby had been active and a
ratter when she was young, but that was so long ago it was forgotten,
and for many years now Baby had wanted only her warm basket and her
dinner.

Anna in her active life found need of others, of Peter and the funny
little Rags, but always Baby was the eldest and held her with the ties
of old affection. Anna was harsh when the young ones tried to keep
poor Baby out and use her basket. Baby had been blind now for some
years as dogs get, when they are no longer active. She got weak and
fat and breathless and she could not even stand long any more. Anna
had always to see that she got her dinner and that the young active
ones did not deprive her.

Baby did not die with a real sickness. She just got older and more
blind and coughed and then more quiet, and then slowly one bright
summer's day she died.

There is nothing more dreary than old age in animals. Somehow it is
all wrong that they should have grey hair and withered skin, and blind
old eyes, and decayed and useless teeth. An old man or an old woman
almost always has some tie that seems to bind them to the younger,
realer life. They have children or the remembrance of old duties, but
a dog that's old and so cut off from all its world of struggle, is
like a dreary, deathless Struldbrug