"No!" said Lars Peter heartily, stretching out his big hand. "Then welcome here, for you must be Johannes—my youngest brother." He held the youth's hand, looking at him cordially. "Oh, so that's what you look like now; last time I saw you, you were only a couple of months old. You're just like mother!"
Johannes smiled rather shyly, and drew his hand away; he was not so pleased over the meeting as was his brother.
"Leave the work and come inside," said Lars Peter, "and the girl will make us a cup of coffee. Well, well! To think of meeting like this. Ay, just like mother, you are." He blinked his eyes, touched by the thought.
As they drank their coffee, Johannes told all the news from home. The mother had died some years ago and the brothers were gone to the four corners of the earth. The news of his mother's death was a great blow to Lars Peter. "So she's gone?" said he quietly. "I've not seen her since you were a baby. I'd looked forward to seeing her again—she was always good, was mother."
"Well," Johannes drawled, "she was rather grumpy."
"Not when I was at home—maybe she was ill a long time."
"We didn't get on somehow. No, the old man for me, he was always in a good temper."
"Does he still work at his old trade?" asked Lars Peter with interest.
"No, that's done with long ago. He lives on his pension!" Johannes laughed. "He breaks stones on the roadside now. He's as hard as ever and will rule the roost. He fights with the peasants as they pass, and swears at them because they drive on his heap of stones."
Johannes himself had quarreled with his master and had given him a black eye; and as he was the only butcher who would engage him over there, he had left, crossing over at Lynoes—with the machine which he had borrowed from a sick old scissor-grinder.