“You wouldn’t like to walk up to the mine with me?” said he.

And a little after something went wrong with Leopoldine’s eyes; everything turned red and strange about her, and the floor was slipping away from under, and Chief Clerk Andresen was talking from somewhere ever so far off.  Saying:  “Couldn’t you spare the time?”

“No,” says she.

And Heaven knows how she managed to get out of the kitchen again.  Her mother looked at her and asked what was the matter.  “Nothing,” said Leopoldine.

Nothing, no, of course.  But now, look you, ’twas Leopoldine’s turn to be affected, to begin the same eternal round.  She was well fitted for the same, overgrown and pretty and newly confirmed; an excellent sacrifice she would make.  A bird is fluttering in her young breast, her long hands are like her mother’s, full of tenderness, full of sex.  Could she dance?—­ay, indeed she could.  A marvel where she had managed to learn it, but learn it they did at Sellanraa as well as elsewhere.  Sivert could dance, and Leopoldine too; a kind of dancing peculiar to the spot, growth of the new-cleared soil; a dance with energy and swing:  schottische, mazurka, waltz and polka in one.  And could not Leopoldine deck herself out and fall in love and dream by daylight all awake?  Ay, as well as any other!  The day she stood in church she was allowed to borrow her mother’s gold ring to wear; no sin in that, ’twas only neat and nice; and the day after, going to her communion, she did not get the ring on till it was over.  Ay, she might well show herself in church with a gold ring on her finger, being the daughter of a great man on the place—­the Margrave.

When Andresen came down from the mine, he found Isak at Sellanraa, and they asked him in, gave him dinner and a cup of coffee.  All the folk on the place were in there together now, and took part in the conversation.  Andresen explained that his master, Aronsen, had sent him up to see how things were at the mines, if there was any sign of beginning work there again soon.  Heaven knows, maybe Andresen sat there lying all the time, about being sent by his master; he might just as well have hit on it for his own account—­and anyway, he couldn’t have been at the mines at all in the little time he’d been away.

“’Tis none so easy to see from outside if they’re going to start work again,” said Isak.

No, Andresen admitted that was so; but Aronsen had sent him, and after all, two pair of eyes could see better than one.

But here Inger seemingly could contain herself no longer; she asked:  “Is it true what they’re saying, Aronsen is going to sell his place again?”

Andresen answers:  “He’s thinking of it.  And a man like him can surely do as he likes, seeing all the means and riches he’s got.”

“Ho, is he so rich, then?”

“Ay,” says Andresen, nodding his head; “rich enough, and that’s a true word.”

Again Inger cannot keep silence, but asks right out: