“Miss Mary,” Anna began.  She had stopped just within the door, her body and her face stiff with repression, her teeth closed hard and the white lights flashing sharply in the pale, clean blue of her eyes.  Her bearing was full of the strange coquetry of anger and of fear, the stiffness, the bridling, the suggestive movement underneath the rigidness of forced control, all the queer ways the passions have to show themselves all one.

“Miss Mary,” the words came slowly with thick utterance and with jerks, but always firm and strong.  “Miss Mary, I can’t stand it any more like this.  When you tell me anything to do, I do it.  I do everything I can and you know I work myself sick for you.  The blue dressings in your room makes too much work to have for summer.  Miss Jane don’t know what work is.  If you want to do things like that I go away.”

Anna stopped still.  Her words had not the strength of meaning they were meant to have, but the power in the mood of Anna’s soul frightened and awed Miss Mary through and through.

Like in all large and helpless women, Miss Mary’s heart beat weakly in the soft and helpless mass it had to govern.  Little Jane’s excitements had already tried her strength.  Now she grew pale and fainted quite away.

“Miss Mary!” cried Anna running to her mistress and supporting all her helpless weight back in the chair.  Little Jane, distracted, flew about as Anna ordered, bringing smelling salts and brandy and vinegar and water and chafing poor Miss Mary’s wrists.

Miss Mary slowly opened her mild eyes.  Anna sent the weeping little Jane out of the room.  She herself managed to get Miss Mary quiet on the couch.

There was never a word more said about blue dressings.

Anna had conquered, and a few days later little Jane gave her a green parrot to make peace.

For six more years little Jane and Anna lived in the same house.  They were careful and respectful to each other to the end.

Anna liked the parrot very well.  She was fond of cats too and of horses, but best of all animals she loved the dog and best of all dogs, little Baby, the first gift from her friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman.

The widow Mrs. Lehntman was the romance in Anna’s life.

Anna met her first at the house of her half brother, the baker, who had known the late Mr. Lehntman, a small grocer, very well.

Mrs. Lehntman had been for many years a midwife.  Since her husband’s death she had herself and two young children to support.

Mrs. Lehntman was a good looking woman.  She had a plump well rounded body, clear olive skin, bright dark eyes and crisp black curling hair.  She was pleasant, magnetic, efficient and good.  She was very attractive, very generous and very amiable.

She was a few years older than our good Anna, who was soon entirely subdued by her magnetic, sympathetic charm.

Mrs. Lehntman in her work loved best to deliver young girls who were in trouble.  She would take these into her own house and care for them in secret, till they could guiltlessly go home or back to work, and then slowly pay her the money for their care.  And so through this new friend Anna led a wider and more entertaining life, and often she used up her savings in helping Mrs. Lehntman through those times when she was giving very much more than she got.