"Good evening, Father!" said another voice, and Kegel, the day-laborer, came in, and stood leaning on his shovel, "what are you working here for? it is evening." "Working, do you say? Here is something to work at! Say to torment one, rather. What? Do you call that a model? I can work very well after a model, but the devil himself couldn't work after such a model as that." "Is that the same old beast, you had begun on, the other day?" "What else should it be? You may ask me next summer, if it is finished!" "He must have a clever head, though, to think out such things as that." "So? Do you think so? let me tell you any blockhead can _think_ out things, but the difficulty is to _make_ them. You see, there are three sorts of people in the world; one understands things, but cannot make them, and the second can make them, but don't understand them, and the third can neither make nor understand, and he belongs to the last class,"--here he threw a wedge against the door,--"and that is why he torments a fellow so!" "Yes, Father, that is so, he doesn't understand. You know, he said we were to go straight to him, if we wanted anything; well I went to him, and told him about the potato-land, how I wanted some more, and he said he knew nothing about such matters, he would speak to our old man about it. If he comes to him, I may wait long enough, for he knows that I let the hoeing go by." "The old man for me! he stands by his word; he says to me, Flegel, cut me out a plough-board; and I do it, and he says, Flegel, the wheels must have new felloes, and I put them on, and I have nothing to worry about; but with him! You will see, neighbor, he will lie in the nettles, and we shall lie in the nettles too." "That is so," said Kegel, "my potato-patch lies in the nettles, already." "Yes," said Flegel, shutting the door, and pulling on his jacket, "but it serves you right! If you have no potatoes it is your own fault, because you did not hoe them; and if the inspector should give you more land, it would not help you." "That is true," said Kegel shouldering his spade, and going off with Flegel, "it wouldn't help, especially towards filling the children's mouths, yet I might help myself by means of it." People say, and it is true, that praise from the mouth of a child, or the humblest person, is pleasing to the wisest and most distinguished; but it is just as true that a hard judgment, from the same insignificant source, is painful, and especially painful when it concerns one whom we hold dear. And what had happened? It was only the gossip of laborers, such as often occurs among ignorant people; but the smile had gone from the young wife's eyes, and a look of vexation found place there. Her husband's insight, and his good will to carry out what he had promised in his speech, were called in question, and it all came from this, that he had not grown up to the business he had undertaken.