Tante Ilde longed to stay with Hermann whose plight was more and more engaging her thought and sympathy. She had had time while Mizzi was in the kitchen to press his hand lovingly and to tell him she was going to Kaethe's tomorrow, and to try to get there too, Kaethe was worrying about Carli. He had answered listlessly,
"Yes, if I have a fairly decent day. You've seen how hard it is for me to get about."
Instinctively she had not mentioned the Eberhardts in Mizzi's presence. It would have darkened her brow and salted unduly the repast. People that couldn't get a living somehow! Mizzi had no use at all for them. In some mysterious, but certain way, it was their own fault. Even the Peace was no excuse in Mizzi's eyes.
When she came back from the kitchen saying briskly, and they realized, without appeal:
"Well, are you ready, Tante Ilde?" Frau Stacher hastily put on her coat, that is as hastily as possible. It had tight sleeves and they always stuck on the little white shawl she wore underneath for warmth. Mizzi came to the rescue, gave it a poke down the back, a pull about the shoulders and crossed it over the frail chest with a final energetic punch that left Frau Stacher breathless. Then she slipped easily into her own ample coat and turned up its large beaver collar. But after all Mizzi pleased, Mizzi on the road to success, was not so terrifying. She was safely diverted out of family discontent by the pleasantly exciting difficulties and triumphs of her business. Then, too, those thin, pale girls who sat by the window at the back of the shop, and worked without looking up when Mizzi was there, were continual escape-valves.
Even little Tilly with fingers like a fairy, got her share. No one could tie a bow like Tilly, not even Mizzi herself, and then those diaphanous garments that she turned out, delicate bits of nothing, the very stitches themselves were like trimming. Mizzi knew first class work when she saw it, and she further saw that she got the greatest amount possible done in the day.
Tilly's mother was dying in a back room, reached by a third stairway in the court of an old house, and Tilly never answered Mizzi back, was never "fresh" and it was quite evident that she never dreamed of giving notice but only of giving satisfaction.
In face of Mizzi's pleasant, flowing briskness that could, however, so easily curdle into thick displeasure, Tante Ilde, though she longed to stay, could but say goodbye to Hermann, with a secret pressure of his hand. For a moment she felt the encircling warmth of his great chest and shoulders as he bent down to kiss her. Then he sank heavily back into his chair. She turned at the door for a last sight of him, but already he was plunged in his thoughts and did not look up again. She could have wept for Hermann then and there.
As she followed Mizzi down the stairs, they met two young-old women with pale, head-heavy babies in their arms.
"Manny's patients," said Mizzi who was really a terrible woman, an abysmal contempt in her voice, "I don't know how I put up with it."