“Yes,” said Joggeli, “sometimes it goes that way; but let’s let the wood go:  the threshing’s more pressing now.”—­

“As you will,” said Uli, and went somewhat heavy-hearted to bed.

“Well, you are the queerest man,” said the old woman to her husband.  “I liked what Uli said awfully well.  It would have been to our advantage; and if those two fine gentlemen, the carter and the milker, don’t have time to be drying their noses in the sun all day, it won’t hurt ’em a bit, the scamps.  Uli will be worth nothing to you, if you go on that way.”

“But I won’t take orders from a servant.  If I let him do that he’d think nobody but he was to give orders.  You’ve got to show ’em right from the start how you want to have things.” grumbled Joggeli.

“Yes, you’re the right one to show ’em; you spoil the good ones, and the bad ones you’re afraid of and let ’em do as they please—­that’s your way,” said his wife.  “It’s always been that way, and it isn’t going to be any different now.”

The next morning Uli told the mistress that one maid was superfluous on the threshing-floor, and she might keep for the house whichever she wanted.  And Uli threshed through to the floor, and held his flail so that it touched his neighbor’s and forced him to thresh the whole length of the grain to the wall; and when one section was done, the secondary tasks were quickly finished and they threshed again; and all this Uli effected not by words, but, by the rapidity of his own work.  In the house they remarked that it seemed as if they must have different flails for the threshing; these sounded quite different, and as if they went through to the floor.  The maid who was released told Freneli how they were going to do for this fellow; he needn’t think that he was going to start a new system, for they weren’t going to let themselves be tormented by such a fellow.  She was sorry for him; he was well-mannered and he certainly could work, she must admit.  Everything he put his hands to went well.  While they were threshing the carter had ridden off, ostensibly to the blacksmith.  The milker had gone off with the cow, but without telling his errand.  It was noon before either came back, and neither had worked a stroke.

After dinner Uli helped peel the remaining potatoes, as is customary in well-ordered households if time permits; the others ran out, scarcely taking time to pray.  When Uli came out there was an uproar in the barn; two couples were wrestling on the straw of the last threshing, while the others looked on.  He called to the milker to come quickly and take out the calves and look to them; probably they needed to be shorn and salved.  The milker said that wasn’t Uli’s business; nobody was to touch his calves; they would be all right for a long while.  And the carter stepped up to Uli, crying, “Shall we have a try at each other—­if you dare?” Uli’s blood boiled, for he saw that it was a put-up job; yet he could not well refuse.  Sooner or later, he well knew, he would have to stand up to them and show his mettle.  And so he said to himself, let it be now; then they would have his measure.