with interference or without would she strain less to keep
on saving every cent and working every hour of the day. But truly she
loved it best when she could scold. Now it was not only other girls
and the colored man, and dogs, and cats, and horses and her parrot,
but her cheery master, jolly Dr. Shonjen, whom she could guide and
constantly rebuke to his own good.

The doctor really loved her scoldings as she loved his wickednesses
and his merry joking ways.

These days were happy days with Anna.

Her freakish humor now first showed itself, her sense of fun in
the queer ways that people had, that made her later find delight in
brutish servile Katy, in Sally's silly ways and in the badness of
Peter and of Rags. She loved to make sport with the skeletons the
doctor had, to make them move and make strange noises till the negro
boy shook in his shoes and his eyes rolled white in his agony of fear.

Then Anna would tell these histories to her doctor. Her worn, thin,
lined, determined face would form for itself new and humorous creases,
and her pale blue eyes would kindle with humour and with joy as her
doctor burst into his hearty laugh. And the good Anna full of the
coquetry of pleasing would bridle with her angular, thin, spinster
body, straining her stories and herself to please.

These early days with jovial Dr. Shonjen were very happy days with the
good Anna.

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