Here Anna and the boys gave it to each other in sharp hits and hearty
boisterous laughter, the girls made things for them to eat, and waited
on them all, the mother loved all her children all the time, and
the father joined in with his occasional unpleasant word that made a
bitter feeling but which they had all learned to pass as if it were
not said.
It was to the comfort of this house that Anna came that Sunday summer
afternoon, after she had left Mrs. Lehntman and her careless ways.
The Drehten house was open all about. No one was there but Mrs.
Drehten resting in her rocking chair, out in the pleasant, scented,
summer air.
Anna had had a hot walk from the cars.
She went into the kitchen for a cooling drink, and then came out and
sat down on the steps near Mrs. Drehten.
Anna's anger had changed. A sadness had come to her. Now with the
patient, friendly, gentle mother talk of Mrs. Drehten, this sadness
changed to resignation and to rest.
As the evening came on the young ones dropped in one by one. Soon the
merry Sunday evening supper was begun.
It had not been all comfort for our Anna, these months of knowing
Mrs. Drehten. It had made trouble for her with the family of her half
brother, the fat baker.
Her half brother, the fat baker, was a queer kind of a man. He was a
huge, unwieldy creature, all puffed out all over, and no longer able
to walk much, with his enormous body and the big, swollen, bursted
veins in his great legs.
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