Aunt Mathilda see that you live in a house soon all alone with Herman and your baby, and then everything go better for you.  You hear me what I say to you Lena.  Now don’t let me ever see you come looking like this any more Lena, and you just stop with that always crying.  You ain’t got no reason to be sitting there now with all that crying, I never see anybody have trouble it did them any good to do the way you are doing, Lena.  You hear me Lena.  You go home now and you be good the way I tell you Lena, and I see what I can do.  I make your Aunt Mathilda make old Mrs. Kreder let you be till you get your baby all right.  Now don’t you be scared and so silly Lena.  I don’t like to see you act so Lena when really you got a nice man and so many things really any girl should be grateful to be having.  Now you go home Lena to-day and you do the way I say, to you, and I see what I can do to help you.”

“Yes Mrs. Aldrich” said the good german woman to her mistress later, “Yes Mrs. Aldrich that’s the way it is with them girls when they want so to get married.  They don’t know when they got it good Mrs. Aldrich.  They never know what it is they’re really wanting when they got it, Mrs. Aldrich.  There’s that poor Lena, she just been here crying and looking so careless so I scold her, but that was no good that marrying for that poor Lena, Mrs. Aldrich.  She do look so pale and sad now Mrs. Aldrich, it just break my heart to see her.  She was a good girl was Lena, Mrs. Aldrich, and I never had no trouble with her like I got with so many young girls nowadays, Mrs. Aldrich, and I never see any girl any better to work right than our Lena, and now she got to stand it all the time with that old woman Mrs. Kreder.  My!  Mrs. Aldrich, she is a bad old woman to her.  I never see Mrs. Aldrich how old people can be so bad to young girls and not have no kind of patience with them.  If Lena could only live with her Herman, he ain’t so bad the way men are, Mrs. Aldrich, but he is just the way always his mother wants him, he ain’t got no spirit in him, and so I don’t really see no help for that poor Lena.  I know her aunt, Mrs. Haydon, meant it all right for her Mrs. Aldrich, but poor Lena, it would be better for her if her Herman had stayed there in New York that time he went away to leave her.  I don’t like it the way Lena is looking now, Mrs. Aldrich.  She looks like as if she don’t have no life left in her hardly, Mrs. Aldrich, she just drags around and looks so dirty and after all the pains I always took to teach her and to keep her nice in her ways and looking.  It don’t do no good to them, for them girls to get married Mrs. Aldrich, they are much better when they only know it, to stay in a good place when they got it, and keep on regular with their working.  I don’t like it the way Lena looks now Mrs. Aldrich.  I wish I knew some way to help that poor Lena, Mrs. Aldrich, but she she is a bad old woman, that old Mrs. Kreder, Herman’s mother.  I speak to Mrs. Haydon real soon, Mrs. Aldrich, I see what we can do now to help that poor Lena.”