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Isak was no longer littleness and humility; he had paid, as it were, like a gentleman, for Goldenhorns. "Here you are," he could say. "I've brought along a horse; we can call it quits." He stood there, upright and agile, against his wont; shifted the plough once more, picked it up and carried it with one hand and stood it up against the wall. Oh, he could manage an estate!
"Trust Inger for looking after creatures every way," says Oline. Isak puts a question: "Goldenhorns was at your place before?" "Ay, from a calf. Not my place, though; at my son's. But 'tis all the same. And we've her mother still." Isak had not heard better news a long while; it was a burden lighter. Goldenhorns was his and Inger's by honest right.
There was Goldenhorns, for instance, no fear of her running away now, with the calf and bull to play with; she ran about in the woods all day long. The goats too were thriving, their heavy udders almost dragging on the ground. Inger made a long robe of blue cotton print, and a little cap of the same stuff, as pretty as could be and that was for the christening.
Give me the boy, let me take him there, he's as right as can be!" Early in May came a visitor. A woman came over the hills to that lonely place where none ever came; she was of Inger's kinsfolk, though not near, and they made her welcome. "I thought I'd just look in," she says, "and see how Goldenhorns gets on since she left us."
Potatoes can be served with what you please; a dish of milk, a herring, is enough. The rich eat them with butter; poor folk manage with a tiny pinch of salt. Isak could make a feast of them on Sundays, with a mess of cream from Goldenhorns' milk. Poor despised potato a blessed thing! But now things look black even for the potato crop. Isak looked at the sky unnumbered times in the day.
But will there be feed enough here d'you think?" Isak began to believe, as he was only too willing to do, that all was well. "As for the feed, why, there'll be feed enough, never fear." Then they went indoors to eat and drink and make an evening together. They lay awake talking of Cow; of the great event. "And isn't she a dear cow, too? Her second's on the way. And her name's Goldenhorns.
And speaking as carelessly as he could, he asked, "Where d'you get her?" "Her name's Goldenhorns. What's that wall to be for you've been building up here? You'll work yourself to death, you will. Oh, come and look at the cow, now, won't you?" They went out to look, and Isak was in his underclothes, but that was no matter.
"Building?" says Isak. "Oh, 'tis nothing to speak of. A bit of a shed, maybe, if we should need it. What's that you were saying about Goldenhorns? You'd like to see her?" They go across to the cowshed, and there's cow and calf to show, and an ox to boot. The visitor nods her head, looking at the beasts, and at the shed; all fine as could be, and clean as couldn't be cleaner.
It worked out beautifully. But there was another matter Isak had thought of times out of number: that Goldenhorns, where had she come from, whose had she been? There was never a wife on earth like Inger. Ho! a wild thing she was, that let him do as he pleased with her, and was glad of it. But suppose one day they were to come for the cow, and take it away and worse, maybe, to come after?
"Do as you think; 'tis none of my business with calves and things." "Well, 'twould be a pity to eat up calf, seems to me. And leave us with but one cow on the place." "Don't seem to me like you'd do that anyway," says Isak. That was their way. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth. And Goldenhorns calved.
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