Habermann rose and gave his hand to the two old people, and his sister stood by, looking anxiously in their faces to see what they thought of the visit. She had already told them the occasion of her brother's coming, and that might have been the reason why their faces looked sourer than usual; or it might have been on account of the luxurious supper with which the table was spread.
The old folks sat down to the table. The old woman looked sharply at Habermann's little girl. "Is that his?" she asked.
The young woman nodded.
"Going to stay here?" she asked further.
The young woman nodded again.
"So!" said the old woman, and prolonged the word, as if to indicate all the damage which she expected her Jochen to suffer on that account. "Yes, times are hard," she began, as if she must have a fling at the times, "and one has enough to do to carry oneself through the world."
The old man all the time was looking at the beer bottles and Bräsig's glass. "Is that my beer?" asked he.
"Yes," shouted Bräsig into his ear, "and it is fine beer, which Frau Nüssler has brewed, a good cordial for a thin, weak person."
"Too extravagant! Too extravagant!" muttered the old man to himself. The old woman ate, but kept looking away, over the table, toward the chest of drawers.
The young wife, who must have studied attentively the old woman's behavior, looked in the same direction, and perceived with horror that the cap was missing from the stand. "Good heavens! what had become of the cap?" She had herself that very morning plaited it and hung it up on the stand.