Not long afterward Uli drove to market with a horse, but soon saw that he could not sell it for what he was instructed to get, so, as it was bad weather, he took it from the market-place and stabled it in an inn. Turning a corner to enter the inn, he bumped into his old master. With unconcealed joy Uli held out his hand and told him how glad he was to see him and to be with him for a while. The master was somewhat cool and spoke of much business, but finally named a place where they could drink a bottle in peace. There, after they were seated in a corner fairly well out of sight, they began the preliminaries. Johannes asked whether there had been much hay, and Uli said yes, and asked whether his grain had fallen too; the first wind had felled theirs. "You're doing well," continued the master after some further talk, "and what do I hear? Folks say you're soon to be farmer at Slough Farm." "Why, who says that?" asked Uli. "Oh, folks say it's being talked about far and wide, and they say it's surely true." "Folks always know more than those concerned," said Uli. "There must be something in it," answered the master. "Oh," said Uli, "I wouldn't say that it might not be some time, but it's a long way off yet; nothing has been said about it and it might turn out either way." "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." "Does she still loll around the house, or does she take hold with the housekeeping?" asked Johannes.