ou wear your
new dress I got you, and your hat with all them flowers on it, and
you be very careful coming you don't get your things all dirty, you so
careless all the time, Lena, and not thinking, and you act sometimes
you never got no head at all on you. You go home now, and you tell
your Mrs. Aldrich that you leave her Tuesday. Don't you go forgetting
now, Lena, anything I ever told you what you should do to be careful.
You be a good girl, now Lena. You get married Tuesday to Herman
Kreder." And that was all Lena ever knew of what had happened all this
week to Herman Kreder. Lena forgot there was anything to know about
it. She was really to be married Tuesday, and her Aunt Mathilda said
she was a good girl, and now there was no disgrace left upon her.

Lena now fell back into the way she always had of being always dreamy
and not there, the way she always had been, except for the few days
she was so excited, because she had been left by a man the very day
she was to have been married. Lena was a little nervous all these last
days, but she did not think much about what it meant for her to be
married.

Herman Kreder was not so content about it. He was quiet and was sullen
and he knew he could not help it. He knew now he just had to let
himself get married. It was not that Herman did not like Lena Mainz.
She was as good as any other girl could be for him. She was a little
better perhaps than other girls he saw, she was so very quiet, but
Herman did not like to always have to have a girl around him. Herman
had always done everything that his mother and his father wanted. His
father had found him in New York, where Herman had gone to be with his
married sister.

Herman's father when he had found him coaxed Herman a long time and
went on whole days with his complaining to him, always troubled but
gentle and quite patient with him, and always he was worrying to
Herman about what was the right way his boy Herman should always do,
always whatever it was his mother ever wanted from him, and always
Herman never made him any answer.

Old Mr. Kreder kept on saying to him, he did not see how Herman could
think now, it could be any different. When you make a bargain you just
got to stick right to it, that was the only way old Mr. Kreder could
ever see it, and saying you would get married to a girl and she got
everything all ready, that was a bargain just like one you make in
business and Herman he had made it, and now Herman he