Isak had been feeling the need of praise, and is the better for it now. Feels a man again. “I’m buying from the Government,” says Isak.
“Ay, Government. But they’ve no call to be grasping in a deal, surely? What are you building now?”
“Why, I don’t know. Nothing much, anyway.”
“Ay, you’re getting on; building and getting on you are. Painted doors to the house, and a clock on the wall—’tis a new grand house you’re building, I suspect.”
“You, with your foolish talk …” says Isak. But he is pleased all the same, and says to Inger: “Couldn’t you make a bit of a dish of nice cream custard for one that comes a-visiting?”
“That I can’t,” says Inger, “for I’ve churned all there was.”
“ ’Tis no foolish talk,” puts in Oline hurriedly; “I’m but a simple woman asking to know. And if it’s not a new grand house, why, ’twill be a new big barn, I dare say; and why not? With all these fields and meadow lands, fine and full of growth; ay, and full of milk and honey, as the Bible says.”
Isak asks: “How’s things looking your way—crops and the like?”
“Why, ’tis there as it is till now. If only the Lord don’t set fire to it all again this year, and burn up the lot—Heaven forgive me I should say the word. ’Tis all in His hand and almighty power. But we’ve nothing our parts that’s any way like this place of yours to compare, and that’s the solemn truth.”
Inger asks after other relatives, her Uncle Sivert in particular. He is the great man of the family, and owns rich fisheries; ’tis almost a wonder how he can find a way to spend all he has. The women talk of Uncle Sivert, and Isak and his doings somehow drop out of sight; no one asks any more about his building now, so at last he says:
“Well, if you want to know, ’tis a bit of a barn with a threshing-floor I’m trying to get set up.”
“Just as I thought,” says Oline. “Folk with real sound sense in their heads, they do that way. Fore-thought and back-thought and all as it should be. There’s not a pot nor pitcher in the place you haven’t thought of. A threshing-floor, you said?”
Isak is a child. Oline’s flattering words go to his head, and he answers something foolishly with fine words: “As to that new house of mine, there must be a threshing-floor in the same, necessarily. ’Tis my intention so.”
“A threshing-floor?” says Oline, wagging her head.
“And where’s the sense of growing corn on the place if we’ve nowhere to thresh it?”
“Ay, ’tis as I say, not a thing as could be but you have it all there in your head.”
Inger is suddenly out of humour again. The talk between the other two somehow displeases her, and she breaks in:
“Cream custard indeed! And where’s the cream to come from? Fish it up in the river, maybe?”
Oline hastens to make peace. “Inger, Lord bless you, child, don’t speak of such a thing. Not a word of cream nor custard either—an old creature like me that does but idle about from house to neighbour … !”
Isak sits for a while, then up, and saying suddenly: “Here am I doing nothing middle of the day, and stones to fetch and carry for that wall of mine!”
“Ay, a wall like that’ll need a mighty lot of stone, to be sure.”
“Stone?” says Isak. “ ’Tis like as if there’d never be enough.”
When Isak is gone, the two womenfolk get on nicely together for a while; they sit for hours talking of this and that. In the evening, Oline must go out and see how their livestock has grown: cows, a bull, two calves, and a swarm of sheep and goats. “I don’t know where it’ll ever end,” says Oline, with her eyes turned heavenwards.
And Oline stays the night.
Next morning she goes off again. Once more she has a bundle of something with her. Isak is working in the quarry, and she goes another way round, so that he shall not see.
Two hours later, Oline comes back again, steps into the house, and asks at once: “Where is Isak?”
Inger is washing up. Oline should have passed by the quarry where Isak was at work, and the children with him; Inger at once guesses something wrong.
“Isak? What d’you want with him?”
“Want with him?—why, nothing. Only I didn’t see him to say goodbye.”
Silence. Oline sits down on a bench without being asked, drops down as if her legs refuse to carry her. Her manner is intended to show that something serious is the matter; she is overcome.
Inger can control herself no longer. Her face is all terror and fury as she says:
“I saw what you sent me by Os-Anders. Ay, ’twas a nice thing to send!”
“Why … what … ?”
“That hare.”
“What do you mean?” asks Oline in a strangely gentle voice.
“Ah, don’t deny it!” cries Inger, her eyes wild. “I’ll break your face in with this ladle here—see that!”
Struck her? Ay, she did so. Oline took the first blow without falling, and only cried out: “Mind what you’re doing, woman! I know what I know about you and your doings!” Inger strikes again, gets Oline down to the floor, falls on her there, and thrusts her knees into her.
“D’you mean to murder me?” asks Oline. The terrible woman with the harelip was kneeling on her, a great strong creature armed with a huge wooden ladle, heavy as a club. Oline was bruised already, and bleeding, but still sullenly refusing to cry out. “So you’re trying to murder me too!”
“Ay, kill you,” says Inger, striking again. “There! I’ll see you dead before I’ve done with you.” She was certain of it now. Oline knew her secret; nothing mattered
