s too, and
clever at the work, besides; she could cut out material without a
pattern. Sometimes she would even hem a whole length on her machine,
and all for nothing, and give the stuff back to the girls with a
delightful jest: "There--now you can sew the buttons on yourself!"

Later in the year Inger was sent for down to the village, to do
dressmaking for some of the great folks there. Inger could not go; she
had a household to look after, and animals besides, all the work of
the home, and she had no servant.

Had no what? Servant!

She spoke to Isak one day.

"If only I had some one to help me, I could put in more time sewing."

Isak did not understand. "Help?"

"Yes, help in the house--a servant-girl."

Isak must have been taken aback at this; he laughed a little in
his iron beard, and took it as a jest. "Ay, we should have a
servant-girl," said he.

"Housewives in the towns always have a servant," said Inger.

"Ho!" said Isak.

Well, Isak was not perhaps in the best of humour just then, not
exactly gentle and content, no, for he had started work on that
sawmill, and it was a slow and toilsome business; he couldn't hold the
baulks with one hand, and a level in the other, and fix ends at the
same time. But when the boys came back from school again it was
easier; the lads were useful and a help, bless them! Sivert especially
had a genius for knocking in nails, but Eleseus was better at handling
a plumb-line. By the end of a week, Isak and the boys had actually got
the foundation posts in, and soundly fixed with stretcher pieces as
thick as the beams themselves.

It worked out all right--everything worked out all right somehow. But
Isak was beginning to feel tired in the evenings now--whatever
it could be. It was not only building a sawmill and getting that
done--there was everything else besides. The hay was in, but the corn
was standing yet, soon it would have to be cut and stacked: there were
the potatoes too, they would have to be taken up before long. But the
boys were a wonderful help. He did not thank them; 'twas not the way
among folk of their sort, but he was mightily pleased with them for
all that. Now and again they would sit down in the middle of their
work and talk together, the father almost asking his sons' advice as
to what they should do next. Those were proud moments for the lads,
they learned also to think well before they spoke, lest they should be
in the wrong.

"'Twould be a pity n