"Hi, come and hold
the horse a bit, can't you?"

Out goes Inger. "Where is it now? Oh, Isak, have you hired him again?
Where have you been all this time? 'Tis six days gone."

"Where d'you think I'd be? Had to go all sorts of ways round to find a
road for this cart of mine. Hold the horse a bit, can't you?"

"Cart of yours! You don't mean to say you've bought that cart?"

Isak dumb; Isak swelling with things unspoken. He lifts out a plough
and a harrow he has brought; nails, provisions, a grindstone, a sack
of corn. "And how's the child?" he asks.

"Child's all right. 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. But when Inger gave
up asking, and began talking to the horse instead, he came out of his
lofty silence at last.

"Ever see a farm _without_ a horse and cart, and plough and harrows,
and all the rest of it? And since you want to know, why, I've bought
that horse and cart, and all that's in it," says he.

And Inger could only shake her head and murmur: "Well, I never did see
such a man!"

Isak was no longer littleness and humility; he had paid, as it were,
like a gentleman, for Goldenhorns. "Here you are," he could say. "I've
brought along a horse; we can call it quits."

He stood there, upright and agile, against his wont; shifted the
plough once more, picked it up and carried it with one hand and stood
it up against the wall. Oh, he could manage an estate! He took up the
other things: the harrow, the grindstone, a new fork he had bought,
all the costly agricultural implements, treasures of the new home, a
grand array. All requisite appliances--nothing was lacking.

"H'm. As for that loom, why, we'll manage that too, I dare say, as
long as I've my health. And there's your cotton print; they'd none but
blue, so I took that."

There was no end to the things he brought. A bottomless well, rich in
all manner of things, like a city store.

Says Inger: "I wish Oline could have seen all this when she was here."

Just like a woman! Sheer senseless vanity--as if that mattered! Isak
sniffed contemptuously. Though perhaps he himself would not have been
displeased if Oline had been there to see.

The c