"Sour stick," said Fanny as usual when referring to her step-mother. "I'll just keep her with me, for a day or two, till she's better," she continued thinking boldly, swiftly, "Maria can look after her."
It seemed suddenly the most natural thing in the world to have Tante Ilde with her for a day or two.
"Fanny, how good you are to us all," Kaethe whispered to her sister.
"Good—nothing!" said Fanny. But virtue was, all the same, its own quite sufficient reward at that moment, though she felt horribly self-reproachful at the thought that sometimes she'd let them go for months ... suppose they had all died!
Tante Ilde kept slipping down between her nieces in the carriage, though they were supporting her as well as they could. Her head was hanging over her breast. She wanted to sleep, even bumping along over those cobble stones. They all watched her anxiously. Once Fanny, her nerves quite on edge, leaned out of the window and screamed to the driver in a horrible voice that the others didn't recognize: "You, sheepshead! Get along!"
Then somewhat restored she drew her head in and after a few minutes, opening her immense gold bag gave Kaethe some money. No, Fanny wasn't doing things by halves that day.
"Get something nice for supper,—for the children," she added with sudden tears that were for the living children—no more for Carli who was really forever safe, though they seemed to have left him alone, in that chill Vienna earth, under that darkening January sky....
Frau Stacher scarcely knew how they got her upstairs. Only as from a great distance she heard Maria's "Jesus, Marie, Josef!" as they went in. She was beyond any more definite impression than that she had ceased to struggle. Fortitude, cruel virtue, were no longer demanded of her.
When she was gently laid on Fanny's bed she was conscious at first of its soft comfort under her aching body. They were taking off her clothes. She wished, but not anxiously, nor even ashamedly, that her chemise had not been so old or so grey from being always washed out in her little basin, but it didn't really matter she knew, and she quite forgot about it when something fresh and silken and scented took its place, lying smoothly against her back with its hot point of pain.
"Alcove," she continued to mutter from time to time between stertorous breathings.