"
"Well," said Johannes, "it seems to me there's been enough talk about
it."
"Why, how so?" asked Uli.
"Why, the girl's pregnant!"
"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.
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