Poor Inger, not so eternally wise as he, as Isak, that lord of creation.  And this was before she learned to know him, and reckon with his way of putting things.  Says Inger: 

“Why, it’s never a cowshed you’re building, surely?”

“Ho,” says he.

“But you don’t mean it?  I—­I thought you’d be building a house first.”

“Think so?” says Isak, putting up a face as if he’d never in life have thought of that himself.

“Why yes.  And put the beasts in the hut.”

Isak thought for a bit.  “Ay, maybe ’twould be best so.”

“There,” says Inger, all glad and triumphant.  “You see I’m some good after all.”

“Ay, that’s true.  And what’d you say to a house with two rooms in?”

“Two rooms?  Oh ...!  Why, ’twould be just like other folks.  Do you think we could?”

They did.  Isak he went about building, notching his baulks and fitting up his framework; also he managed a hearth and fireplace of picked stones, though this last was troublesome, and Isak himself was not always pleased with his work.  Haytime came, and he was forced to climb down from his building and go about the hillsides far and near, cutting grass and bearing home the hay in mighty loads.  Then one rainy day he must go down to the village.

“What you want in the village?”

“Well, I can’t say exactly as yet....”

He set off, and stayed away two days, and came Back with a cooking-stove—­a barge of a man surging up through the forest with a whole iron stove on his back. “’Tis more than a man can do,” said Inger.  “You’ll kill yourself that gait.”  But Isak pulled down the stone hearth, that didn’t look so well in the new house, and set up the cooking-stove in its place. “’Tisn’t every one has a cooking-stove,” said Inger.  “Of all the wonders, how we’re getting on!...”

Haymaking still; Isak bringing in loads and masses of hay, for woodland grass is not the same as meadow grass, more’s the pity, but poorer by far.  It was only on rainy days now that he could spare time for his building; ’twas a lengthy business, and even by August, when all the hay was in, safely stored under the shelter of the rock, the new house was still but half-way done.  Then by September:  “This won’t do,” said Isak.  “You’d better run down to the village and get a man to help.”  Inger had been something poorly of late, and didn’t run much now, but all the same she got herself ready to go.

But Isak had changed his mind again; had put on his lordly manner again, and said he would manage by himself.  “No call to bother with other folk,” says he; “I can manage it alone.”

“’Tis more than one man’s work,” says Inger.  “You’ll wear yourself out.”

“Just help me to hoist these up,” says Isak, and that was all.

October came, and Inger had to give up.  This was a hard blow, for the roof-beams must be got up at any cost, and the place covered in before the autumn rains; there was not a day to be lost.  What could be wrong with Inger?  Not going to be ill?  She would make cheese now and then from the goats’ milk, but beyond that she did little save shifting Goldenhorns a dozen times a day where she grazed.