"Yes, and now all our day-laborers are standing outside, and want to speak to you."
"Are they going to drive us away?" asked Frida, rising, very quietly and proudly, from her chair.
"No, no! dear, gracious Frau," cried Korlin, throwing herself on the floor, and grasping her about the knees, while the tears started from her eyes, "no, no! There is no talk of that, and my old father says, if any one should propose such a thing, he would beat out his brains with a shovel. They only say there is no use in speaking to the Herr, he breaks up their talk too shortly. They want lo speak to you, because they have confidence in you."
"Where is Triddelsitz?"
"Dear heart! he is going round among them, but they won't listen to him, they say they have nothing to do with him, they want to speak to the gracious Frau."
"Come!" said Frida, and went down.
"What do you want, good people?" asked the young Frau, as she stepped outside the door, before which the laborers were assembled. The wheelwright, Fritz Flegel, stepped up, and said:
"Gracious Frau, we have only come to you because we are all agreed,--and we told the Herr so before; but nothing came of it. And the Herr answered us harshly, and we have no real confidence in Herr Triddelsitz, for he is so thoughtless, and doesn't know yet how things should be managed, and we thought you might help us, if you would be so kind. We are not dissatisfied because we want more, we are contented with what we get, and we get what belongs to us;--but never at the right time; and poor people like us cannot stand that."
"Yes," interrupted Päsel, "and last year, the famine year, the rye was all sold, and you see, gracious Frau, some of us get our pay in grain; and I was to have twelve bushels of rye, and live on it, and I got none, and they said we must be patient. Oh, patience! And all the potatoes bad! How can we live?"
"Gracious Frau," said an old white-haired man, "I will say nothing about the means of life, for we have never gone hungry; but for an old man like me to stand, all day long, bent over in the ditch, shoveling water,--and at evening I am too stiff to move, and cannot sleep at night for misery,--it isn't right. We didn't have such doing? when Herr Habermann was here; but now it is all commanding and commanding, and the commanders know nothing about the work."