decided without any fuss that Jensine should come back again if she could be got.  Inger, too, had no longer a word against it; she had come to her senses again, and said:  “Ay, do as you think best.”  Ay, Inger was grown reasonable now; ’tis no little thing to come to one’s senses again after a spell.  Inger was no longer full of heat that must out, no longer full of wild blood to be kept in check, the winter had cooled her; nothing beyond the needful warmth in her now.  She was getting stouter, growing fine and stately.  A wonderful woman to keep from fading, keep from dying off by degrees; like enough because she had bloomed so late in life.  Who can say how things come about?  Nothing comes from a single cause, but from many.  Was Inger not in the best repute with the smith’s wife?  What could any smith’s wife say against her?  With her disfigurement, she had been cheated of her spring, and later, had been set in artificial air to lose six years of her summer; with life still in her, what wonder her autumn gave an errant growth?  Inger was better than blacksmiths’ wives—­a little damaged, a little warped, but good by nature, clever by nature ... ay....

Father and son drive down, they come to Brede Olsen’s lodging-house and set the horse in a shed.  It is evening now.  They go in themselves.

Brede Olsen has rented the house; an outbuilding it had been, belonging to the storekeeper, but done up now with two sitting-rooms and two bedrooms; none so bad, and in a good situation.  The place is well frequented by coffee-drinkers and folk from round about the village going by the boat.

Brede seems to have been in luck for once, found something suited to him, and he may thank his wife for that.  ’Twas Brede’s wife had hit on the idea of a coffee-shop and lodging-house, the day she sat selling coffee at the auction at Breidablik; ’twas a pleasant enough thing to be selling something, to feel money in her fingers, ready cash.  Since they had come down here they had managed nicely, selling coffee in earnest now, and housing a deal of folk with nowhere else to lay their heads.  A blessing to travellers, is Brede’s wife.  She has a good helper, of course, in Katrine, her daughter, a big girl now and clever at waiting—­though that is only for the time, of course; not long before little Katrine must have something better than waiting on folk in her parents’ house.  But for the present, they are making money fairly well, and that is the main thing.  The start had been decidedly favourable, and might have been better if the storekeeper had not run short of cakes and sweet biscuits to serve with the coffee; here were all the feast-day folk calling for cakes with their coffee, biscuits and cakes!  ’Twas a lesson to the storekeeper to lay in a good supply another time.

The family, and Brede himself, live as best they can on their takings.  A good many meals are nothing but coffee and stale cakes left over, but it keeps them alive, and gives the children a delicate, sort of refined appearance.  ’Tis not every one has cakes with their coffee, say the village folk.  Ay, Bredes are doing well, it seems; they even manage to keep a dog, that goes round begging among the customers and gets bits here and there and grows fat on it.  A good fat dog about the place is a mighty fine advertisement for a lodging-house; it speaks for good feeding anywhere.