shy ribbons.

The candy she always bought in the evening. She would slip into the shop
of Herr Degen, and, with her greedy eyes opened as wide as possible, buy
twenty pfennigs' worth of sweets, at which she would nibble until she
went to bed.

The ribbons she sewed together into sashes, which she wore on her hat or
around her neck or on her dress. The gaudier the colour the better she
liked it. If her mother asked her where she got the ribbons she was
forced to lie. Although she had no girl friends, as a matter of fact no
friends of any kind, she would say that this or that girl had given them
to her. When her wealth became too conspicuous, she would leave the
house and not tie her sashes about her until she had reached some
unlighted gateway or dark corner.

She never dared go to the attic more than once a week; she did this when
her brothers were at school and her parents in the shop. The fear lest
some one find her out and take her stolen riches from her made her more
and more uneasy, lending to her face an expression of virulent distrust.

She would go up the thirteen steps from the landing to the attic with
trembling feet. The fact that there were exactly thirteen was the first
thing that awakened her superstition. As the months crept on, she
resigned to this superstition with the abandon of an inveterate
voluptuary. If she chanced to put her left foot first on the bottom step
and not to notice it until she was half way up, she would turn around,
come down, and relinquish the pleasure of seeing her treasures for the
rest of that week.

She was afraid of ghosts, witches, and magicians; if a cat ran across
the street in front of her, she turned as white as chalk.

Theresa did not keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this
ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she
got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions
Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to
the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself by purposely ruining
the sheets, towels, and shirts that lay in the clothes basket. When in
this mood and at this business, she made use of a regular oath that she
herself had formulated: it consisted of sentences that sounded most
impressive, though they had no meaning.

She cherished the odd delusion that it lay in her power to bring
misfortune to other people. The time Jason Philip complained of poor
business she felt an