“That’s what you’ve been thinking of?”

“No, not that way....  Unless Eleseus he’d like to have the place to work on.”

“Eleseus?  Well, no, I don’t know—­”

Long pause, the two men thinking hard.  The father begins gathering tools together, packing up to go home.

“Ay, unless ...” said Sivert.  “You might ask him what he says.”

The father made an end of the matter thus:  “Well, there’s another day, and we haven’t found that door-slab yet, either.”

Next day was Saturday, and they had to be off early to get across the hills with the child.  Jensine, the servant-girl, was to go with them; that was one godmother, the rest they would have to find from among Inger’s folk on the other side.

Inger looked nice; she had made herself a dainty cotton dress, with white at the neck and wrists.  The child was all in white, with a new blue silk ribbon drawn through the lower edge of its dress; but then she was a wonder of a child, to be sure, that could smile and chatter already, and lay and listened when the clock struck on the wall.  Her father had chosen her name.  It was his right; he was determined to have his say—­only trust to him!  He had hesitated between Jacobine and Rebecca, as being both sort of related to Isak; and at last he went to Inger and asked timidly:  “What d’you think, now, of Rebecca?”

“Why, yes,” said Inger.

And when Isak heard that, he grew suddenly independent and master in his own house.  “If she’s to have a name at all,” he said sharply, “it shall be Rebecca!  I’ll see to that.”

And of course he was going with the party to church, partly to carry, and partly for propriety’s sake.  It would never do to let Rebecca go to be christened without a decent following!  Isak trimmed his beard and put on a red shirt, as in his younger days; it was in the worst of the hot weather, but he had a nice new winter suit, that looked well on him, and he wore it.  But for all that, Isak was not the man to make a duty of finery and show; as now, for instance, he put on a pair of fabulously heavy boots for the march.

Sivert and Leopoldine stayed behind to look after the place.

Then they rowed in a boat across the lake, and that was a deal easier than before, when they had had to walk round all the way.  But half-way across, as Inger unfastened her dress to nurse the child, Isak noticed something bright hung in a string round her neck; whatever it might be.  And in the church he noticed that she wore that gold ring on her finger.  Oh, Inger—­it had been too much for her after all!

Chapter XVII

Eleseus came home.