She was dressed in a black satin morning gown, the sleeves,
great monster things, were heavy with the mass of her soft flesh.
She sat there always, large, helpless, gentle. She had a fair, soft,
regular, good-looking face, with pleasant, empty, grey-blue eyes, and
heavy sleepy lids.
Behind Miss Mary was the little Jane, nervous and jerky with
excitement as she saw Anna come into the room.
"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.
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