About forty miles from the place where Hawermann had laid his wife in her quiet grave, was the farm of which Joseph Nüssler, his brother-in-law, was tenant. The offices were ill-built, had fallen a good deal out of repair, and the yard had altogether a very untidy appearance. There was a large manure-yard here, and a small one there, and carting and agricultural implements were all mixed up together in confused masses like people at a fair; the manure-cart said to the carriage: how did you get here, brother? and the plough asked the harrow to dance, but music was wanting, for there was dead silence in the yard. Every one was busy hay-making in the meadow, for the weather was lovely. No one was looking out of any of the small open windows in the long, low, thatched farm-house, for it was in the afternoon, and the cook had finished her kitchen-work, and the housemaid had done with her sweeping and dusting, and both of them had gone down to the meadow. Even the farmer's wife, who always kept such order in the house, had gone there too, rake in hand, for the hay ought to be in cocks before the evening-dews began to fall. Still there was life in the house although it was so quiet. In the sitting-room, to the right of the entrance-hall, where the blue-painted cupboard stood--the bar as they called it--and the sofa covered with the black-glazed linen, which was rubbed up with boot-polish every Saturday till it shone again, and the oak chest with the yellow mounting, well, in this room sat two little girls of three years old with round flaxen heads, and round rosy cheeks, playing at making cheeses in a sand-box with their mother's thimble and two penny jars, which they filled with the damp sand, and pressed down as hard as they could, laughing gleefully whenever the lump kept its shape when turned out. These children were Lina and Mina Nüssler, and with their rosy cheeks and yellow hair they looked for all the world like two little round apples, growing on one stalk. They were twins, and even people who knew them well, found it impossible to say which was Lina and which Mina, for their names were not written on their faces, and if their mother had not given them different coloured ribbons there would have been great mistakes made; even their father, Joseph Nüssler, could not distinguish the one from the other, he called Lina, Mina, and Mina, Lina. But now no such mistakes need be made, for their mother had tied up Lina's flaxen plaits with blue ribbon, and Mina's with red; but if any one had only taken the trouble to look closely at them he must have seen clearly that Joseph Nüssler was wrong, for Lina was half an hour older than Mina, and even when the difference in age is small, still birth-right always makes itself known, and Lina had quite the upper-hand of Mina, but she comforted her little sister whenever she was unhappy.