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"Why doesn't he show himself when he comes home?" said Joggeli; and "Good gracious, why doesn't he come to supper?" said the mother. "Go and tell him to come in at once, we're keeping something warm for him." "Wait," said Joggeli, "I'll go out myself and see how he's doing it and what's been done." "But make him come," said the mother; "I think he must have got good and hungry."
The master is at first vexed, but sees that he must either pay Uli what will satisfy him, or let him go. Uli suggests buying or renting something, but the master will not hear to it; Uli has too little money for that. Then one autumn the master goes to market and encounters there a cousin, Joggeli, who has come, he says, to see Johannes.
"Hans, the carter, and I will bring the wood in, and if the milker helps in the threshing and the others help him with fodder and manure, the threshing won't suffer." "All right, do it so," said Joggeli, and went out. Now the storm broke over Uli's head, first in single peals, then in whole batteries of thunder.
Folks have manured on Sunday time out of mind, and were satisfied with it; it would have been good enough for him too." The people at church recognize in Uli the new overseer, and wonder how long he will stay; but to his face they tell him to make what profit he can out of Joggeli. He comes home to new ridicule but, facing it down, retires to his cold room to read his Bible.
He is tempted to conceal this profit from the master, and keep it for himself, but better counsels prevail. Joggeli bids him share the profit with the milker, and reluctantly pays Uli's expenses out of his own pocket. He boasts to his wife that he has tested Uli by sending a man to him to buy the old cows; she upbraids him for this underhandedness.
When one of the men was asked to lend a hand he scoffed and cursed and would not budge; even the mistress had to endure this, and when she complained to Joggeli he simply said she was always complaining. He didn't hire servants to help the women-folk; they had something else to do beside hauling flowers around.
In February the weather was generally bad and the ground soft; then you couldn't budge anything and ruined all the wagons. That wouldn't do very well, thought Joggeli; it was not customary to begin threshing in February. He hadn't meant that, said Uli. They should continue threshing.
As they drove up, Joggeli came stumping on a stick around the house, which stood on rather low ground, and said that he had been looking for them for a long time, and had almost thought they weren't coming; he had become impatient. He shouted toward the barns, which were built against the house, for some one to come and take the horse. No one came.
Joggeli tells his troubles: he and his wife are getting old and decrepit, and can no longer look after their large farm as formerly. Their son Johannes has become too stuck-up for the farm and now runs a tavern; their daughter is good for nothing, incompetent and lazy.
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