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Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena by Gertrude Stein
page 45 of 272 (16%)

It was in this house that Anna had first met her friend, the widow,
Mrs. Lehntman.

The Federners had never seemed to feel it wrong in Anna, her devotion
to this friend and her care of her and of her children. Mrs. Lehntman
and Anna and her feelings were all somehow too big for their attack.
But Mrs. Federner had the mind and tongue that blacken things. Not
really to blacken black, of course, but just to roughen and to rub on
a little smut. She could somehow make even the face of the Almighty
seem pimply and a little coarse, and so she always did this with her
friends, though not with the intent to interfere.

This was really true with Mrs. Lehntman that Mrs. Federner did not
mean to interfere, but Anna's friendship with the Drehtens was a very
different matter.

Why should Mrs. Drehten, that poor common working wife of a man who
worked for others in a brewery and who always drank too much, and was
not like a thrifty, decent german man, why should that Mrs. Drehten
and her ugly, awkward daughters be getting presents from her husband's
sister all the time, and her husband always so good to Anna, and one
of the girls having her name too, and those Drehtens all strangers to
her and never going to come to any good? It was not right for Anna to
do so.

Mrs. Federner knew better than to say such things straight out to her
husband's fiery, stubborn sister, but she lost no chance to let Anna
feel and see what they all thought.

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