‘At that time my parents’ situation was somewhat improved. My sister, who had emigrated to America with her husband, began sending money every month, enough for us to live on. There were only the three of us at home: my mother, my father, and me, and we didn’t need much. My father earned something occasionally too, and we made ends meet. And then that winter my mother fell ill and took to her bed. She had rheumatic pains in her right leg. She wasn’t seriously ill, but she couldn’t move. At first my father was going to write to his sister in the neighbouring town, and ask her to send her daughter to stay with us and help in the house for a while. We were staying in a large apartment with a number of rooms, in our old house, which had remained in our possession after my father came down in the world, and which he stubbornly refused to sell. “I’ll never sell the roof over my head,” he would argue, “a man who owns his house is still a man, but as soon as he sells his house he’s no better than a beggar.” Now that my mother was ill, we needed someone to take care of the house and especially to do the cooking. After thinking it over, my parents decided to hire a maid.’