don’t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?”
“Are you quite sure,” returns the ironmaster in an altered voice, “that your name is Steel?”
The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
“You are too quick for me!” cries the trooper with the tears springing out of his eyes. “How do you do, my dear old fellow? I never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!”
They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the trooper still coupling his “How do you do, my dear old fellow!” with his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been half so glad to see him as all this!
“So far from it,” he declares at the end of a full account of what has preceded his arrival there, “I had very little idea of making myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me.”
“We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,” returns his brother. “This is a great day at home, and you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an agreement with my son Watt today that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. She goes to Germany tomorrow with one of your nieces for a little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero of it.”