“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.”

“She does have failings,” said Uli, “and is mighty sensitive too.  But if she once has a good husband and has enough to do to keep her busy, so that she could forget herself now and then, she’d surely improve.  Not that she can’t ever be friendly.  She can act very prettily at times; and if the farm’s properly worked one can get at least ten thousand sheaves from it, not counting rye and wheat.”

“That’s a lot,” said Johannes, “and there aren’t many more such farms in the canton.  But if you gave me the choice between a good farm and a bad wife, or neither, I’d take the latter a hundred times over.  To be rich is nice, but riches aren’t happiness; and to have a hateful sour woman at home, that either turns up her nose or bawls at everything, would make a home for the devil to live in.  And if a man has to look for his pleasure outside his house, he’s badly off.”