Motionless, and without showing a sign of pleasure, she stood before him, and did not even stretch out her hand to him.
"Johanna!" he cried, and was going to embrace her.
But she only offered him her forehead to kiss slowly and unwillingly as if performing a great sacrifice, and it seemed to him that she shuddered under the touch of his lips.
This was the reception his pet sister, his childhood's companion, chose to give him after a separation of six years.
He tried with his ready humour to master the situation. "I have gone through a lot, Hannah, since I saw you last," he said laughing. "I have been received in various odd ways in different parts of the globe. With bullets, with poisoned arrows, with rotten eggs, with sour mare's milk, and I don't know what else. But such a welcome as this is altogether novel in my experience."
Her blue-rimmed, melancholy eyes, sunk deeply in her thin haggard face, gazed at him gloomily and searchingly.
"You have been away a long time," she said, and sat down.
"Yes; that is true."
"And you have kept your splendid health and spirits."
"Yes; I have kept in capital health, thank you."