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"But Lord, I must be getting home again there's a lot to do. No dancing for me!" When she reached home she was met at the door by Stagg, and one or two other of Jude's fellow stoneworkers. "We are just going down to the river," said the former, "to see the boat-bumping. But we've called round on our way to ask how your husband is." "He's sleeping nicely, thank you," said Arabella. "That's right.
In reality it was a union of two mansions; the southern part he planned for himself, the northern part for his two daughters. For a year and a half more than six hundred artisans were employed on the interior; sixty stoneworkers were imported from Europe. The capaciousness, the glitter and the cluttering of splendor in the interior were regarded as of unprecedented lavishness in the United States.
The two stoneworkers are still busy, kept on to get the whole thing finished as soon as possible, but Gustaf is no hand at woodwork, so he says, and he is leaving.
And the yard was full of folk all listening to what was going on. "We'll not sell," said he. "Not?" asked his companions. "No." They whispered together again, and they mounted their horses once more in earnest this time. "Twenty-five thousand!" called out one of them. Geissler did not answer, but turned away, and went over to talk to the stoneworkers again.
Now Hjalmar was the younger of the two stoneworkers, but neither of them was young as Gustaf himself, none like him in any way. "Hjalmar huh!" says Inger contemptuously. Then suddenly she changes her tone, and turns to Gustaf, thinking to make him jealous. "Though, after all, he's nice to have on the place, is Hjalmar," says she, "and so prettily he sings and all."
They had hired men to help the first time such a thing had ever been done at Sellanraa two stoneworkers from the Swedish side, to get out stone for a new cowshed. This had been Isak's great idea for years past, to build a proper cowshed.
Inger did a busy trade in milk and farm produce, and it amused her going into business, as it were, and seeing all the many folk coming and going. Isak tramped about with his lumbering tread, and worked on his land; nothing disturbed him. Sivert and the two stoneworkers got the new cowshed up.
Ay, well.... But there's something, Heaven knows, in the other sort of life, something splendid and unequalled. She has learned to make do with little; the Swedish stoneworkers are something, at any rate; strange faces and new voices about the place, but they are quiet, elderly men, given to work rather than play.
With the courtyard full of people now, listening to every word; all the Sellanraa folk, and the stoneworkers and the messengers. Like as not, he could never have raised the money, nor anything near it, for such a deal; but, again, who could say? A man beyond understanding was Geissler. Anyhow, his last words rather disconcerted those gentlemen on horseback. Was it a trick?
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