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 wou