“You must do as you think best Anna,” she said at last letting all of her soft self sink back into the chair.  “I am very sorry and so I am sure will be Miss Jane when she hears what you have thought it best to do.  It was very good of Mrs. Lehntman to come with you and I am sure she does it for your good.  I suppose you want to go out a little now.  Come back in an hour Anna and help me go to bed.”  Miss Mary closed her eyes and rested still and placid by the fire.

The two women went away.

This was the end of Anna’s service with Miss Mary Wadsmith, and soon her new life taking care of Dr. Shonjen was begun.

Keeping house for a jovial bachelor doctor gave new elements of understanding to Anna’s maiden german mind.  Her habits were as firm fixed as before, but it always was with Anna that things that had been done once with her enjoyment and consent could always happen any time again, such as her getting up at any hour of the night to make a supper and cook hot chops and chicken fry for Dr. Shonjen and his bachelor friends.

Anna loved to work for men, for they could eat so much and with such joy.  And when they were warm and full, they were content, and let her do whatever she thought best.  Not that Anna’s conscience ever slept, for neither 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.