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"If you want to do the proper thing, and give your wife a ring she needn't be ashamed to wear, you'd better make it a gold ring." "What!" said Isak aloud. Though maybe in his inmost heart he had been thinking of a gold ring all the time. They talked the matter over seriously, and agreed about getting a measurement of some sort for the ring.
He might have done all this at home, of course, but was shy of doing it before Oline; it was quite enough to stand there right in front of her nose and put on a red shirt. He cuts and cuts away, a certain amount of beard falls into his patent mirror. The horse grows impatient at last and is moving on; Isak is fain to be content with himself as he is, and gets up again.
No, in the summer he does not often drive down for one thing, because the road down from Breidablik, the last part of the way, is so badly kept. He has asked Brede Olsen to help with the upkeep of the road, and do his share. Brede Olsen promises, but does not hold to his word. And Isak will not ask him again. Rather carry a load on his back himself.
But Inger was loth to put it off; it would be ten or twelve years at least before Eleseus was old enough to stay behind and look to the milking while they went. No, Isak must use his brains to find a way. The whole thing had come about somehow without their knowing; maybe the wedding business was just as important as the christening how should he know?
He did not wait for the other to reply, but noted down himself, at a guess. Then he asked Isak about the crops, how much hay, how many bushels of potatoes. And then about boundaries. They could not go round the place marking out waist-deep in snow; and in summer no one could get up there at all. What did Isak think himself about the extent of woodland and pasturage?
Isak mowed his bits of meadow; there was little grass on them for all he had manured them well that spring. He mowed and mowed on the hillsides, farther and farther out; mowing and turning and carting home loads of hay, as if he would never tire, for he had a horse already, and a well-stocked farm. But by mid-July he had to cut the corn for green fodder, there was no help for it.
Good things mostly leave no trace, but something always comes of evil. Isak took the matter sensibly from the first. He made no great words about it, but asked his wife simply: "How did you come to do it?" Inger made no answer to that. And a little after, he spoke again: "Strangled it was that what you did?" "Yes," said Inger. "You shouldn't have done that." "No," she agreed.
Have you bought that cart, that's what I want to know? For here have I been longing and longing for a loom," says she jestingly, in her gladness at having him back again. Isak dumb once more, for a long space, busied with his own affairs, pondering, looking round for a place to put all his goods and implements; it was hard to find room for them all.
"How d'you think he's getting on, Eleseus?" asks Isak suddenly. "Getting on?" says Sivert, to gain time. "Doesn't seem to be doing so well." "H'm. He says it'll go all right." "You spoken to him about it?" "Nay; but Andresen he says so." Isak thought over this, and shook his head. "Nay, I doubt it's going ill," says he. "Tis a pity for the lad."
"You've worked enough," said he, "raking and carting and all." "No, 'tis not enough." "I've no time, anyway, to mend rakes now. You can see there's rain coming soon." And Isak went off to his work. It was all meant to save her, no doubt; for the couple of minutes it would have taken to mend the rake would have been more than tenfold repaid by letting Inger work on.
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