Fanny, who couldn't bear Irma, a "sour stick," sent the boys their winter boots, their woollen stockings and jerseys. Irma eagerly yet acidly received these reminders of relationship while in her heart condemnatory of the relative. Mizzi, on the contrary, admired Fanny extravagantly and if she had had the necessary "talent" and what she also called "Fanny's luck," would have asked nothing better than to work out her problems along Fanny's lines. She mostly kept her admiration locked in her breast, however, and generally so harsh in her judgments she never uttered a word of reproach where Fanny was concerned. Then, too, it might have got back to her and that wouldn't have done at all. Fanny was too useful. She knew that Hermann sometimes went to see his sister, and she thought it a good thing. He might pick up something there,--which he never did,--but she considered it one of his least useless acts. As for Liesel, Otto had grandly and early signified that it was no place for an honest woman like his Liesel. But then they didn't need Fanny and could indulge in their virtuous segregation, though the reports Liesel heard of Fanny's clothes were tantalizing in the extreme and she was truly sorry that things "were as they were." As for Anna she hated Fanny with a cold, terrible hatred, too cold and terrible for the light of day. A sombre jealousy was its chief ingredient, back from their childhood days, but Anna had forgotten that and thought it was detestation of Fanny's ways. She and Hermine could get along without her too. And then, deadliest of sins, she was convinced, though she had no definite way of finding out, that Pauli had a soft place in his heart for her. Fanny here, Fanny there, she was sick of it. Fanny doing what was done for the Eberhardts, Fanny doing what was done for Irma and the three little stepbrothers, Fanny paying, she could bet, for Tante Ilde's alcove. Ah! Bah! Kaethe loved her sister very much and Eberhardt, from the clouds, was apt to fall as a dew of mercy alike on the just and the unjust. Pauli and Hermann never mentioned her, though 'twas true that Pauli frequented the flat assiduously and Hermann would have gone oftener but for the terror of those open places.