s. Federner always
ended with, "And you so good to them Anna all the time. I don't see
how they could get along at all if you didn't help them all the time,
but you are so good Anna, and got such a feeling heart, just like your
brother, that you give anything away you got to anybody that will ask
you for it, and that's shameless enough to take it when they ain't no
relatives of yours. Poor Mrs. Drehten, she is a good woman. Poor thing
it must be awful hard for her to have to take things from strangers
all the time, and her husband spending it on drink. I was saying to
Mrs. Lehntman, Anna, only yesterday, how I never was so sorry for any
one as Mrs. Drehten, and how good it was for you to help them all the
time."

All this meant a gold watch and chain to her god daughter for her
birthday, the next month, and a new silk umbrella for the elder
sister. Poor Anna, and she did not love them very much, these
relatives of hers, and they were the only kin she had.

Mrs. Lehntman never joined in, in these attacks. Mrs. Lehntman was
diffuse and careless in her ways, but she never worked such things for
her own ends, and she was too sure of Anna to be jealous of her other
friends.

All this time Anna was leading her happy life with Dr. Shonjen.
She had every day her busy time. She cooked and saved and sewed and
scrubbed and scolded. And every night she had her happy time, in
seeing her Doctor like the fine things she bought so cheap and cooked
so good for him to eat. And then he would listen and laugh so loud, as
she told him stories of what had happened on that day.

The Doctor, too, liked it better all the time and several times in
these five years he had of his own motion raised her wages.

Anna was content with what she had and grateful for all her doctor did
for her.

So Anna's serving and her giving life went on, each with its varied
pleasures and its pains.

The adopting of the little boy did not put an end to Anna's friendship
for the widow Mrs. Lehntman. Neither the good Anna nor the careless
Mrs. Lehntman would give each other up excepting for the gravest
cause.

Mrs. Lehntman was the only romance Anna ever knew. A certain magnetic
brilliancy in person and in manner made Mrs. Lehntman a woman other
women loved. Then, too, she was generous and good and honest, though
she was so careless always in her ways. And then she trusted Anna and
liked her better than any of her other friends, and Anna always felt
this ve