But Theresa left her bed not as a woman forty-six years old—that was her age—but as a woman of seventy. She had only a few sparsely distributed grey hairs left on her square head, her face was full of wrinkles, her eye was hard and cold. From that time on, however, she did not seem to age. She did not quarrel any more, attended to her affairs in a straightforward, self-assured way, and observed her increasing impoverishment with unexpected calm.
She lived on herring, potatoes, and coffee; it was the same diet on which Philippina and Markus lived, with the one exception that Markus, as the child nearest her heart, was allowed a piece of sugar for his coffee. Jason Philip was also put on a diet: he never dared open his mouth about it, either.
Philippina stood it for a while in silence; finally she said to her mother: “I can’t stand this chicory brew forever.”
“Then you’ll have to lap up water, you will,” replied Theresa.
“No, I won’t,” said Philippina. “I am going to hire out.”
“Well, hire out. Who cares? It’ll be one mouth less to feed.” “Your daughter is going to hire out,” said Theresa to her husband, when he came home that evening.
Jason Philip had been playing cards that day, and had lost. He was in a terrible humour: “She can go plumb to the Devil so far as I am concerned.” That was his comment.
The next morning Philippina sneaked up to the attic, and drew out her cash from the hole in the chimney: it amounted to nine hundred and forty marks, mostly in gold, which she had exchanged in the course of years for small coins. Through the opening in the wall the June sun fell upon her face, which, never young and bearing the stamp of extended crime, looked like that of a witch.
She put the money in a woollen stocking, rolled it up in a knot, stuffed it down her corset between her breasts, made the sign of the cross, and repeated one of her drivelling formulas. Her clothes, ribbons, and other possessions she had already packed in a basket. This she carried down the stairs, and, without saying good-bye to a soul, left the house.