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. He did not try to walk much now. He sat
around his place, leaning on his great thick stick, and watching his
workmen at their work.

On holidays, and sometimes of a Sunday, he went out in his bakery
wagon. He went then to each customer he had and gave them each a
large, sweet, raisined loaf of caky bread. At every house with many
groans and gasps he would descend his heavy weight out of the wagon,
his good featured, black haired, flat, good natured face shining with
oily perspiration, with pride in labor and with generous kindness.
Up each stoop he hobbled with the help of his big stick, and into the
nearest chair in the kitchen or in the parlour, as the fashion of the
house demanded, and there he sat and puffed, and then presented to the
mistress or the cook the raisined german loaf his boy supplied him.

Anna had never been a customer of his. She had always lived in another
part of the town, but he never left her out in these bakery progresses
of his, and always with his own hand he gave her her festive loaf.

Anna liked her half brother well enough. She never knew him really