y people.

Herman Kreder was cleaner than the old people, just because it was his
nature to keep cleaner, but he was used to his mother and his father,
and he never thought that they should keep things cleaner. And Herman
too always saved all his money, except for that little beer he drank
when he went out with other men of an evening the way he always liked
to do it, and he never thought of any other way to spend it. His
father had always kept all the money for them and he always was doing
business with it. And then too Herman really had no money, for he
always had worked for his father, and his father had never thought to
pay him.

And so they began all four to live in the Kreder house together, and
Lena began soon with it to look careless and a little dirty, and to be
more lifeless with it, and nobody ever noticed much what Lena wanted,
and she never really knew herself what she needed.

The only real trouble that came to Lena with their living all four
there together, was the way old Mrs. Kreder scolded. Lena had always
been used to being scolded, but this scolding of old Mrs. Kreder was
very different from the way she ever before had had to endure it.

Herman, now he was married to her, really liked Lena very well. He did
not care very much about her but she never was a bother to him being
there around him, only when his mother worried and was nasty to them
because Lena was so careless, and did not know how to save things
right for them with their eating, and all the other ways with money,
that the old woman had to save it.

Herman Kreder had always done everything his mother and his father
wanted but he did not really love his parents very deeply. With Herman
it was always only that he hated to have any struggle. It was all
always all right with him when he could just go along and do the same
thing over every day with his working, and not to hear things, and not
to have people make him listen to their anger. And now his marriage,
and he just knew it would, was making trouble for him. It made him
hear more what his mother was always saying, with her scolding. He had
to really hear it now because Lena was there, and she was so scared
and dull always when she heard it. Herman knew very well with his
mother, it was all right if one ate very little and worked hard all
day and did not hear her when she scolded, the way Herman always had
done before they were so foolish about his getting married and having
a girl t