She never said a word of her past life to the good Anna, but it was very plain to see that her experience had not left her easy, nor yet altogether free.

It had been hard for this good woman, for Mrs. Lehntman was really a good woman, it had been a very hard thing for this german woman to do what everybody knew and thought was wrong.  Mrs. Lehntman was strong and she had courage, but it had been very hard to bear.  Even the good Anna did not speak to her with freedom.  There always remained a mystery and a depression in Mrs. Lehntman’s affair.

And now the blonde, foolish, awkward daughter, Julia was in trouble.  During the years the mother gave her no attention, Julia kept company with a young fellow who was a clerk somewhere in a store down in the city.  He was a decent, dull young fellow, who did not make much money and could never save it for he had an old mother he supported.  He and Julia had been keeping company for several years and now it was needful that they should be married.  But then how could they marry?  He did not make enough to start them and to keep on supporting his old mother too.  Julia was not used to working much and she said, and she was stubborn, that she would not live with Charley’s dirty, cross, old mother.  Mrs. Lehntman had no money.  She was just beginning to get on her feet.  It was of course, the good Anna’s savings that were handy.

However it paid Anna to bring about this marriage, paid her in scoldings and in managing the dull, long, awkward Julia, and her good, patient, stupid Charley.  Anna loved to buy things cheap, and fix up a new place.

Julia and Charley were soon married and things went pretty well with them.  Anna did not approve their slack, expensive ways of doing.

“No Miss Mathilda,” she would say, “The young people nowadays have no sense for saving and putting money by so they will have something to use when they need it.  There’s Julia and her Charley.  I went in there the other day, Miss Mathilda, and they had a new table with a marble top and on it they had a grand new plush album.  ’Where you get that album?’ I asked Julia.  ‘Oh, Charley he gave it to me for my birthday,’ she said, and I asked her if it was paid for and she said not all yet but it would be soon.  Now I ask you what business have they Miss Mathilda, when they ain’t paid for anything they got already, what business have they to be buying new things for her birthdays.  Julia she don’t do no work, she just sits around and thinks how she can spend the money, and Charley he never puts one cent by.  I never see anything like the people nowadays Miss Mathilda, they don’t seem to have any sense of being careful about money.  Julia and Charley when they have any children they won’t have nothing to bring them up with right.  I said that to Julia, Miss Mathilda, when she showed me those silly things that Charley bought her, and she just said in her silly, giggling way, perhaps they won’t have any children.  I told her