It was easy to blacken all the Drehtens, their poverty, the husband's
drinking, the four big sons carrying on and always lazy, the awkward,
ugly daughters dressing up with Anna's help and trying to look so
fine, and the poor, weak, hard-working sickly mother, so easy to
degrade with large dosings of contemptuous pity.

Anna could not do much with these attacks for Mrs. Federner always
ended with, "And you so good to them Anna all the time. I don't see
how they could get along at all if you didn't help them all the time,
but you are so good Anna, and got such a feeling heart, just like your
brother, that you give anything away you got to anybody that will ask
you for it, and that's shameless enough to take it when they ain't no
relatives of yours. Poor Mrs. Drehten, she is a good woman. Poor thing
it must be awful hard for her to have to take things from strangers
all the time, and her husband spending it on drink. I was saying to
Mrs. Lehntman, Anna, only yesterday, how I never was so sorry for any
one as Mrs. Drehten, and how good it was for you to help them all the
time."

All this meant a gold watch and chain to her god daughter for her
birthday, the next month, and a new silk umbrella for the elder
sister. Poor Anna, and she did not love them very much, these
relatives of hers, and they were the only kin she had.

Mrs. Lehntman never joined in, in these attacks. Mrs. Lehntman was
diffuse and careless in her ways, but she never worked such things for
her own ends, and she was too sure of Anna to be jealous of her other
friends.

All this time Anna was leading her happy life with Dr. Shonjen.