However, Elsie was not ashamed, but paid Trinette back heartily in her own coin:  a girl could choose anybody she wanted for her sweetheart, and could marry a servant or a master; all men were alike before God.  But if once she was a wife she’d be ashamed to have her name connected now with the stable-boy and now with the butcher, now with the herder and now with the carter, and finally with all the peddlers and traders, and to have children with no two noses the same and looking as much alike as Swiss and Italians.  But for Freneli and the mother, the two sisters-in-law would have torn the grass-green and the sulphur-yellow dresses from each other’s bodies.  When the mother wanted to help out Trinette by speaking for her, Elsie became so excited that they had to put her to bed.  Now, she said, when she recovered consciousness and speech—­now she surely would do what she wanted; she wouldn’t let herself be made into sausages like a fat sow; and it was cruel of her parents to want just one child to inherit and to let the other child pine away without a husband, just so all the money would stay in one pile.

Johannes and his wife did not stay long.  Turning in frequently on the homeward road, and giving up all restraint, they spun out at length the whole story to their friends and colleagues, male and female, and their story carried the rumor to complete certainty.  The brother and his wife told it themselves, people said, and they ought to know.

Not long afterward Uli drove to market with a horse, but soon saw that he could not sell it for what he was instructed to get, so, as it was bad weather, he took it from the market-place and stabled it in an inn.  Turning a corner to enter the inn, he bumped into his old master.  With unconcealed joy Uli held out his hand and told him how glad he was to see him and to be with him for a while.  The master was somewhat cool and spoke of much business, but finally named a place where they could drink a bottle in peace.  There, after they were seated in a corner fairly well out of sight, they began the preliminaries.  Johannes asked whether there had been much hay, and Uli said yes, and asked whether his grain had fallen too; the first wind had felled theirs.  “You’re doing well,” continued the master after some further talk, “and what do I hear?  Folks say you’re soon to be farmer at Slough Farm.”

“Why, who says that?” asked Uli.

“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.”

“Why, how so?” asked Uli.

“Why, the girl’s pregnant!”