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
so