it yourself, now you really know you wouldn't, Anna, though
you talk to me so hard.--My, it's hot to-day, what you doin' with that
ice tea in there Julia, when Miss Annie is waiting all this time for
her drink?"

Julia brought in the ice tea. She was so excited with the talk she had
been hearing from the kitchen, that she slopped it on the plate out of
the glasses a good deal. But she was safe, for Anna felt this trouble
so deep down that she did not even see those awkward, bony hands,
adorned today with a new ring, those stupid, foolish hands that always
did things the wrong way.

"Here Miss Annie," Julia said, "Here, Miss Annie, is your glass of
tea, I know you like it good and strong."

"No, Julia, I don't want no ice tea here. Your mamma ain't able to
afford now using her money upon ice tea for her friends. It ain't
right she should now any more. I go out now to see Mrs. Drehten. She
does all she can, and she is sick now working so hard taking care of
her own children. I go there now. Good by Mrs. Lehntman, I hope you
don't get no bad luck doin' what it ain't right for you to do."

"My, Miss Annie is real mad now," Julia said, as the house shook, as
the good Anna shut the outside door with a concentrated shattering
slam.

It was some months now that Anna had been intimate with Mrs. Drehten.

Mrs. Drehten had had a tumor and had come to Dr. Shonjen to be
treated. During the course of her visits there, she and Anna had
learned to like each other very well. There was no fever in this
friendship, it was just the interchange of two hard working, worrying
women, the one large and motherly, with the pleasant, patient, soft,
worn, tolerant face, that comes with a german husband to obey, and
seven solid girls and boys to bear and rear, and the other was our
good Anna with her spinster body, her firm jaw, her humorous, light,
clean eyes and her lined, worn, thin, pale yellow face.

Mrs. Drehten lived a patient, homely, hard-working life. Her husband
an honest, decent man enough, was a brewer, and somewhat given to over
drinking, and so he was often surly and stingy and unpleasant.

The family of seven children was made up of four stalwart, cheery,
filial sons, and three hard working obedient simple daughters.

It was a family life the good Anna very much approved and also she
was much liked by them all. With a german woman's feeling for the
masterhood in men, she was docile to the surly father and rarely
rubbed him