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Old Sivert's accounts had appeared more or less in order after Eleseus had been through them; but the farm and the cow, the fishery and nets were barely enough to cover the deficit.
"Why didn't you come to the sale, then, and bid with the rest?" "Me ay, 'tis like you to make a jest of poor folk." "Well, and I thought 'twas you had grown rich and grand. Wasn't it you had left you old Sivert's chest and all his money in? He he he!" Oline was not pleased, not softened at being minded of that legacy. "Ay, old Sivert, he'd a kindly thought for me, and I'll not say otherwise.
He sent out and bought mutton, in the middle of the summer; fish was brought up fresh from the sea, Eleseus being ordered to pay cash from the chest. They lived well enough. They got hold of Oline they couldn't have found a better person to invite to a feast, nor one more sure to spread abroad the news of Uncle Sivert's greatness to the end. And the satisfaction was mutual.
"Daler?" cried Eleseus suddenly, mimicking his brother. Oline, no doubt, thought this ill-timed jesting. Oh, she had herself been cheated of her due; for all that she had managed to squeeze out something like real tears over old Sivert's grave. Eleseus should know best what he himself had written so-and-so much to Oline, to be a comfort and support in her declining years.
"That girl Barbro's filling out a deal of late Lord knows what it may mean. But not a word that I've said so! And here's Sivert back again? No need to ask what news, I suppose? Your Uncle Sivert's passed away? Ay, well, an old man he was and an aged one, on the brink of the grave. What not dead? Well, well, we've much to be thankful for, and that's a solemn word! Me talking nonsense, you say?
And from across the hills came Oline, the imperishable Oline. This time, too, she brought news with her from her own village; 'twas not Oline's way to come empty of gossip. Old Sivert's affairs had been gone into, his accounts reckoned up, and the fortune remaining after him come to nothing. Nothing! Here Oline pressed her lips together and looked from one to another.
And the pair of them talk over things together, and each is glad of a talk with the other. "What's the news down village?" asks Axel. "Why, nothing much," says Sivert. "There's a new man coming to take up land, so they say." A new man nothing in that; 'twas only Sivert's way of putting it. New men came now every year or so, to take up land; there were five new holdings now below Breidablik.
And he worked like a man. Isak could hardly have managed to get the new barn built at all without Sivert's help but there it stood now, with bridge-way and air-holes and all, as big as they had at the parsonage itself. True, it was only a half-timbered building covered with boarding, but extra stout built, with iron clinches at the corners, and covered with one-inch plank from Isak's own sawmill.
"Ho, very well then!" said Inger in an offended tone. "There's Sivert what does he get by way of pocket-money?" Inger answered: "You've never been in a town, and so you don't know these things. Sivert's no need of pocket-money. And talking of money, Sivert ought to be none so badly off when his Uncle Sivert dies." "You don't know." "Ay, but I do know."
Well, perhaps you'd rather tie it up neatly with a red garter?" "Ha ha ha," said Eleseus himself at that; but he went in to his mother, and got her to give him an old thimble, filed off the end, and made quite a fine ferrule. Oh, Eleseus was not so helpless after all, with his long, white hands. The brothers teased each other as much as ever. "Am I to have what Uncle Sivert's left?" asked Eleseus.
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