It was not long before the two old people came back with her, shuffling in with their leathern slippers. Upon both their faces lay that lurking expectation and that vague curiosity which comes from very dull hearing, and which quite too easily passes into an expression of obstinacy and distrust. It has justly been said that married people, who have lived long together, and have thought and cared and worked for the same objects, come at last to look like each other; and even if that is not true of the cut of the features, it holds good for the expression. Both looked like people who never had allowed themselves any pleasure or satisfaction which would be in the least expensive; both looked shabby and dingy in their clothing, as if they must still be sparing and tug at the wheel, and as if even water cost money. No look of comfort in their old age, no pleasure sparkled in their eyes, for they had had but one pleasure in their whole lives,--that was their Jochen and his good success; now they were laid aside and heaviness lay on their natures, and on their only joy, for Jochen was quite too heavy; but for his success they still cared and toiled,--it was the last goal of their lives. The old man was almost imbecile, but the old woman still kept her faculties, and her eyes glanced furtively into all the corners, like a pair of sharpers watching their opportunity. 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.