age, she was all stiff and yet all
trembling with the sore effort of decision and revolt.

As the carriage turned into the Wadsmith gate, little Jane ran out to
see. She just looked at Anna's face; she did not say a word about blue
dressings.

Anna got down from the carriage with little Baby in her arms. She took
out all the goods that she had brought and the carriage drove away.
Anna left everything on the porch, and went in to where Miss Mary
Wadsmith was sitting by the fire.

Miss Mary was sitting in a large armchair by the fire. All the nooks
and crannies of the chair were filled full of her soft and spreading
body. 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.

Like in all large and helpless women, Miss Mary's heart beat weakly in
the soft and helpless mass it had to govern. Little Jane's excitements
had already tried her strength. Now she grew pale and fainted quite
away.

"Miss Mary!" cried Anna running to her mistress and supporting all her
helpless weight back in the chair. Little Jane, distracted, flew about
as Anna ordered, bringing smelling salts and