"Oh, my sakes!" cried Marie; "I forgot all about the coffee!" And she ran back to the kitchen, to find that the kettle had boiled over and put the fire out.
Jan stuck hid head in the door, just as she got the bellows to start the fire again. "What did I tell you!" he shouted, running out his tongue derisively.
"Scat!" said Marie, shaking the bellows at him, and Jan sauntered away toward the pasture with Pier's halter over his arm.
Pier had been eating grass for two nights and a day without doing any work, and it took Jan some time to catch him and put the halter over his head. When at last he returned from the pasture, red and tired, but triumphant, leading Pier, Marie and her mother had already finished their breakfast.
"Look what a man we have!" cried Mother Van Hove as Jan appeared. "He has caught Pier all by himself."
"He lifted me clear off my feet when I put his halter on," said Jan proudly, "but I hung on and he had to come!"
"Marie," cried her mother, "our Jan has earned a good breakfast! Cook an egg for him, while I hitch Pier to the cart. Then, while he and I work in the field, you can put the house in order. There is only one more load to bring in, and we can do that by ourselves."
By noon the last of the wheat had been garnered, and this time Jan drove Pier home, while his mother sat on the load. In the afternoon the three unloaded the wagon and stowed the grain away in the barn to be threshed; and when the long day's work was over, and they had eaten their simple supper of bread and milk, Mother Van Hove and the children went together down the village street to see their neighbors and hear the news, if there should be any.
There were no daily papers in Meer, and now there were no young men to go to the city and bring back the gossip of the day, as there had used to be. The women, with their babies on their arms, stood about in the street, talking quietly and sadly among themselves. On the doorsteps a few old men lingered together over their pipes. Already the bigger boys were playing soldier, with paper caps on their heads, and sticks for guns. The smaller children were shouting and chasing each other through the little street of the village. Jan and Marie joined in a game of blindman's buff, while Mother Van Hove stopped with the group of women.
"If we only knew what to expect!" sighed the Burgomeister's wife, as she shifted her baby from one arm to the other. "It seems as if we should know better what to do. In a day or two I shall send my big boy Leon to the city for a paper. It is hard to wait quietly and know nothing."