in Inger cannot keep silence, but asks right out:

"I wonder, now, what he'd be asking for the place?"

Isak puts in a word here; like as not he's more curious to know than
Inger herself, but it must not seem that the idea of buying Storborg
is any thought of his; he makes himself a stranger to it, and says
now:

"Why, what you want to know for, Inger?"

"I was but asking," says she. And both of them look at Andresen,
waiting. And he answers:

Answers cautiously enough that as to the price, he can say nothing of
that, but he knows what Aronsen says the place has cost him.

"And how much is that?" asks Inger, having no strength to keep her
peace and be silent.

"'Tis sixteen hundred _Kroner_" says Andresen.

Ho, and Inger claps her hands at once to hear it, for if there is one
thing womenfolk have no sense nor thought of, 'tis the price of land
and properties. But, anyway, sixteen hundred _Kroner_ is no small sum
for folk in the wilds, and Inger has but one fear, that Isak may be
frightened off the deal. But Isak, he sits there just exactly like a
fjeld, and says only: "Ay, it's the big houses he's put up."

"Ay," says Andresen again, "'tis just that. 'Tis the fine big houses
and all."

Just when Andresen is making ready to go, Leopoldine slips out by the
door. A strange thing, but somehow she cannot bring herself to think
of shaking hands with him. So she has found a good place, standing in
the new cowshed, looking out of a window. And with a blue silk ribbon
round her neck, that she hadn't been wearing before, and a wonder she
ever found time to put it on now. There he goes, a trifle short and
stout, spry on his feet, with a light, full beard, eight or ten years
older than herself. Ay, none so bad-looking to her mind!

And then the party came back from church late on Sunday night. All had
gone well, little Rebecca had slept the last few hours of the way
up, and was lifted from the cart and carried indoors without waking.
Sivert has heard a deal of news, but when his mother asks, "Well, what
you've got to tell?" he only says: "Nay, nothing much. Axel he's got a
mowing-machine and a harrow."

"What's that?" says his father, all interested. "Did you see them?"

"Ay, I saw them right enough. Down on the quay."

"Ho! So that was what he must go in to town for," says his father.
And Sivert sits there swelling with pride at knowing better, but says
never a word.

His father might just as well believe that A