"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."