Troubles great and small.
One day Isak heard a sudden shout; Inger stood on the door-slab with the child in her arms, pointing over to the bull and the pretty little cow Silverhorns—they were making love. Isak threw down his pick and raced over to the pair, but it was too late, by the look of it. The mischief was done. “Oh, the little rascal, she’s all too young—half a year too soon, a child!” Isak got her into the hut, but it was too late.
“Well, well,” says Inger, “ ’tis none so bad after all, in a way; if she’d waited, we’d have had both of them bearing at the same time.” Oh, that Inger; not so bright as some, maybe, yet, for all that, she may well have known what she was about when she let the pair loose together that morning.
Winter came, Inger carding and spinning, Isak driving down with loads of wood; fine dry wood and good going; all his debts paid off and settled; horse and cart, plough and harrow his very own. He drove down with Inger’s goats’ milk cheeses, and brought back woollen thread, a loom, shuttles and beam and all; brought back flour and provisions, more planks, and boards and nails; one day he brought home a lamp.
“As true as I’m here I won’t believe it,” says Inger. But she had long had in her mind about a lamp for all that. They lit it the same evening, and were in paradise; little Eleseus he thought, no doubt, it was the sun. “Look how he stares all wondering like,” said Isak. And now Inger could spin of an evening by lamplight.
He brought up linen for shirts, and new hide shoes for Inger. She had asked for some dyestuffs, too, for the wool, and he brought them. Then one day he came back with a clock. With what?—A clock. This was too much for Inger; she was overwhelmed and could not say a word. Isak hung it up on the wall, and set it at a guess, wound it up, and let it strike. The child turned its eyes at the sound and then looked at its mother. “Ay, you may wonder,” said Inger, and took the child to her, not a little touched herself. Of all good things, here in a lonely place, there was nothing could be better than a clock to go all the dark winter through, and strike so prettily at the hours.
When the last load was carted down, Isak turned woodman once more, felling and stacking, building his streets, his town of woodpiles for next winter. He was getting farther and farther from the homestead now, there was a great broad stretch of hillside all ready for tillage. He would not cut close any more, but simply throw the biggest trees with dry tops.
He knew well enough, of course, what Inger had been thinking of when she asked for another bed; best to hurry up and get it ready. One dark evening he came home from the woods, and sure enough, Inger had got it over—another boy—and was lying down. That Inger! Only that very morning she had tried to get him to go down to the village again: “ ’Tis time the horse had something to do,” says she. “Eating his head off all day.”
“I’ve no time for suchlike nonsense,” said Isak shortly, and went out. Now he understood; she had wanted to get him out of the way. And why? Surely ’twas as well to have him about the house.
“Why can’t you ever tell a man what’s coming?” said he.
“You make a bed for yourself and sleep in the little room,” said Inger.
As for that, it was not only a bedstead to make; there must be bedclothes to spread. They had but one skin rug, and there would be no getting another till next autumn, when there were wethers to kill—and even then two skins would not make a blanket. Isak had a hard time, with cold at nights, for a while; he tried burying himself in the hay under the rock-shelter, tried to bed down for himself with the cows. Isak was homeless. Well for him that it was May; soon June would be in; July. …
A wonderful deal they had managed, out there in the wilderness; house for themselves and housing for the cattle, and ground cleared and cultivated, all in three years. Isak was building again—what was he building now? A new shed, a lean-to, jutting out from the house. The whole place rang with the noise as he hammered in his eight-inch nails. Inger came out now and again and said it was trying for the little ones.
“Ay, the little ones—go in and talk to them then, sing a bit. Eleseus, he can have a bucket lid to hammer on himself. And it’s only while I’m doing these big nails just here, at the crossbeams, that’s got to bear the whole. Only planks after that, two-and-a-half-inch nails, as gentle as building dolls’ houses.”
Small wonder if Isak hammered and thumped. There stood a barrel of herrings, and the flour, and all kinds of foodstuffs in the stable; better than lying out in the open, maybe, but the pork tasted of it already; a shed they must have, and that was clear. As for the little ones, they’d get used to the noise in no time. Eleseus was inclined to be ailing somehow, but the other took nourishment sturdily, like a fat cherub, and when he wasn’t crying, he slept. A wonder of a child! Isak made no objection to his being called Sivert, though he himself would rather have preferred Jacob. Inger could hit on the right
