His father saw it too.  He never spoke of it; he knew that Eleseus was his mother’s darling, and how she cried over him and shook her head; but one piece of finely woven stuff went after another the same way, and he knew it was more than any living man could use for underclothes.  Altogether, it came to this:  Isak must be Man and Leader again—­head of the house, and step in and interfere.  It had cost a terrible lot of money, to be sure, getting the storekeeper to send a telegram; but in the first place, a telegram could not fail to make an impression on the boy, and also—­it was something unusually fine for Isak himself to come home and tell Inger.  He carried the servant-girl’s box on his back as he strode home; but for all that, he was proud and full of weighty secrets as he had been the day he came home with that gold ring....

It was a grand time after that.  For a long while, Inger could not do enough in the way of showing her husband how good and useful she could be.  She would say to him now, as in the old days:  “You’re working yourself to death!” Or again:  “’Tis more than any man can stand.”  Or again:  “Now, you’re not to work any more; come in and have dinner—­I’ve made some wafers for you!” And to please him, she said:  “I should just like to know, now, what you’ve got in your mind with all that wood, and what you’re going to build, now, next?”

“Why, I can’t say as yet,” said Isak, making a mystery of it.

Ay, just as in the old days.  And after the child was born—­and it was a little girl—­a great big girl, fine-looking and sturdy and sound—­after that, Isak must have been a stone and a miserable creature if he had not thanked God.  But what was he going to build?  It would be more news for Oline to go gadding about with—­a new building again at Sellanraa.  A new wing of the house—­a new house it was to be.  And there were so many now at Sellanraa—­they had a servant-girl; and Eleseus, he was coming home; and a brand-new little girl-child of their own, just come—­the old house would be just an extra room now, nothing more.

And, of course, he had to tell Inger about it one day; she was so curious to know, and though maybe Inger knew it all beforehand, from Sivert,—­they two were often whispering together,—­she was all surprised as any one could be, and let her arms fall, and said:  “’Tis all your nonsense—­you don’t mean it?”

And Isak, brimming over with greatness inside, he answered her:  “Why, with you bringing I don’t know how many more children on the place, ’tis the least I can do, it seems.”

The two menfolk were out now every day getting stone for the walls of the new house.  They worked their utmost together each in his own way:  the one young, and with his young body firmly set, quick to see his way, to mark out the stones that would suit; the other ageing—­tough, with long arms, and a mighty weight to bear down on a crowbar.  When they had managed some specially difficult feat, they would hold a breathing-space, and talk together in a curious, reserved fashion of their own.