all. Inger tossed
her head and turned aside unkindly, and would have nothing to do with
his saw.

"Well, then--" said Isak.

"Why, do you want me to stand getting drenched in the river and have
me laid up? And who's to do all the sewing, and look to the animals
and keep house, and all the rest?"

"No, that's true," said Isak.

Oh, but it was only the four corner posts and the middle ones for
the two long sides he wanted help with, that was all. Inger--was she
really grown so different in her heart through living among folk from
the towns?

The fact was that Inger had changed a good deal; she thought now less
of their common good than of herself. She had taken loom and wheel
into use again, but the sewing machine was more to her taste; and when
the pressing-iron came up from the blacksmith's, she was ready to set
up as a fully-trained dressmaker. She had a profession now. She began
by making a couple of little frocks for Leopoldine. Isak thought them
pretty, and praised them, maybe, a thought too much; Inger hinted that
it was nothing to what she could do when she tried.

"But they're too short," said Isak.

"They're worn that way in town," said Inger. "You know nothing about
it."

Isak saw he had gone too far, and, to make up for it, said something
about getting some material for Inger herself, for something or other.

"For a cloak?" said Inger.

"Ay, or what you'd like."

Inger agreed to have something for a cloak, and described the sort of
stuff she wanted.

But when she had made the cloak, she had to find some one to show it
to; accordingly, when the boys went down to the village to be put to
school, Inger herself went with them. And that journey might have
seemed a little thing, but it left its mark.

They came first of all to Breidablik, and the Breidablik woman and her
children came out to see who it was going by. There sat Inger and the
two boys, driving down lordly-wise--the boys on their way to school,
nothing less, and Inger wearing a cloak. The Breidablik woman felt
a sting at the sight; the cloak she could have done without--thank
heaven, _she_ set no store by such foolishness!--but ... she had
children of her own--Barbro, a great girl already, Helge, the next,
and Kathrine, all of an age for school. The two eldest had been to
school before, when they lived down in the village, but after moving
up to Breidablik, to an out-of-the-way place up on the moors, they had
been forced to give it up