The old maid-servant, who had accompanied him from Portugal, entered at the same time, and watched his preparations, shaking her head.

She was a small, crippled Jewess, a grey-haired woman, with youthful, bright, dark eyes, and restless hands, that fluttered about her face with rapid, convulsive gestures, while she talked.
She had grown old in Portugal, and contracted rheumatism in the unusual cold of the North, so even in Spring she wrapped her head in all the gay kerchiefs she owned.

She kept the house scrupulously neat, understood how to prepare tempting dishes from very simple materials, and bought everything she needed for the kitchen.

This was no trifling matter for her, since, though she had lived more than nine years in the black Forest, she had learned few German words.

Even these the neighbors mistook for Portuguese, though they thought the language bore some distant resemblance to German.