"Oh, folks say it's being talked about far and wide, and they say it's surely true."
"Folks always know more than those concerned," said Uli.
"There must be something in it," answered the master. "Oh," said Uli, "I wouldn't say that it might not be some time, but it's a long way off yet; nothing has been said about it and it might turn out either way."
"Well," said Johannes, "it seems to me there's been enough talk about it."
"That's an accursed lie," cried Uli, "I haven't been near her. I won't say that I couldn't have been; but I'd have been ashamed to. Everybody would have blamed me and thought it was a scoundrelly trick, like a good many others; and I didn't want that. Folks mustn't say of me that I got a rich wife that way." "So, so!" said Johannes; "then things aren't as I've heard, and here I thought that Uli wanted to ask me to be his spokesman. I shouldn't have liked that, I must say, and that's the reason I'd have preferred not to meet you. I'm glad it isn't so; I'd have dirtied my own hands with it too. And in any case it would have vexed me if you'd done like other skunks. But something is in it?"
"Oh," replied Uli, "I wouldn't deny that I've thought the daughter wanted me, and it might be carried through if we took hold of it right. And, to be sure, it has seemed to me that that would be a piece of good fortune for a poor lad like me; I could never do better."
"I suppose it's that pale, transparent little thing, that has to go in out of the wind for fear of getting blown away?"
"Why, she isn't the prettiest that ever was," said Uli; "she's thin and sickly; but she'll surely get better when she has a husband, the doctor says; and she'll get fifty thousand."
"Does she still loll around the house, or does she take hold with the housekeeping?" asked Johannes.
"She doesn't do much work and isn't in the kitchen very often; but she can knit finely and makes all sorts of pretty things with beads. But if she gets the farm some time we could afford a cook. If she only looks after things now and then, she doesn't need to do everything herself," said Uli.
"Ye-up, but to look after things you have to know how yourself; it's foolish to think that if a woman just looks at something, that's all that's necessary. For instance, a woman can sit all day in a drug-store with her knitting, but that won't keep the apprentices from doing as they please. And I thought she looked rather ugly and scowled at a person instead of giving him a friendly word."