“Yes, he is my stepfather.”
“Your stepfather?” he repeated, quite stupefied with astonishment.
“Yes; my own father met with an accident and died when I was very young; he was killed by some falling timber and earth. After his death my mother stayed with the foreman, who was at that time a dike laborer like my own father; they were working together in Bohemia.”
“Oh, you are from Bohemia? That is the reason you speak with a different accent and have such a strange name! Ter— I can not pronounce it.”
“Tertschka,” she said. “It means ‘Therese,’ in German.”
“Here in Austria they would call you Resi. But,” he continued, “if your stepfather takes your wages, he must at least give you enough to eat.”
“Just enough to keep me from starving. You have no idea how stingy he is. He himself lives well; scarcely a day passes without his drinking too much; but to others he would not give even a drop of water unless they paid him for it; he could see them all starve first before he would voluntarily give them a bite to eat. So I have to content myself with the leavings, while he keeps my wages and also the forty florins[3] which my mother left to me. And that is not the worst. He is brutal and malicious and beats me cruelly quite often. You saw yourself yesterday how he lost his temper on account of the blouse I was mending for him.”
“Yes, I did see it.”
“My poor mother he treated in the same way. I firmly believe she sickened and finally died of consumption brought on in consequence of a violent blow he dealt her on the chest when he came home intoxicated and in a bad temper.”
She was silent for a while, lost in all these sad memories. Finally George said: “If your stepfather treats you so badly, why do you stay with him?”