Then Oline wanted new shoes again, and he could be silent no longer.  It was in the autumn, and Oline wore shoes every day, instead of going in wooden pattens or rough hide.

“Looks like being fine today,” said Isak.  “H’m.”  That was how he began.

“Ay,” said Oline.

“Those cheeses, Eleseus,” went on Isak again, “wasn’t it ten you counted on the shelf this morning?”

“Ay,” said Eleseus.

“Well, there’s but nine there now.”

Eleseus counted again, and thought for a moment inside his little head; then he said:  “Yes, but then Os-Anders had one to take away; that makes ten.”

There was silence for quite a while after that.  Then little Sivert must try to count as well, and says after his brother:  “That makes ten.”

Silence again.  At last Oline felt she must say something.

“Ay, I did give him a tiny one, that’s true.  I didn’t think that could do any harm.  But they children, they’re no sooner able to talk than they show what’s in them.  And who they take after’s more than I can think or guess.  For ’tis not your way, Isak, that I do know.”

The hint was too plain to pass unchecked.  “The children are well enough,” said Isak shortly.  “But I’d like to know what good Os-Anders has ever done to me and mine.”

“What good?”

“Ay, that’s what I said.”

“What good Os-Anders ...?”

“Ay, since I’m to give him cheeses in return.”

Oline has had time to think, and has her answer ready now.

“Well, now, I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Isak, that I wouldn’t.  Was it me, pray, that first began with Os-Anders?  I wish I may never move alive from this spot if I ever so much as spoke his name.”

Brilliant success for Oline.  Isak has to give in, as he has done many a time before.

But Oline had more to say.  “And if you mean I’m to go here clean barefoot, with the winter coming on and all, and never own the like of a pair of shoes, why, you’ll please to say so.  I said a word of it three and four weeks gone, that I needed shoes, but never sign of a shoe to this day, and here I am.”

Said Isak:  “What’s wrong with your pattens, then, that you can’t use them?”

“What’s wrong with them?” repeats Oline, all unprepared.

“Ay, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“With my pattens?”

“Ay.”

“Well ... and me carding and spinning, and tending cattle and sheep and all, looking after children here—­have you nothing to say to that?  I’d like to know; that wife of yours that’s in prison for her deeds, did you let her go barefoot in the snow?”

“She wore her pattens,” said Isak.  “And for going to church and visiting and the like, why, rough hide was good enough for her.”

“Ay, and all the finer for it, no doubt.”

“Ay, that she was.  And when she did wear her hide shoes in summer, she did but stuff a wisp of grass in them, and never no more.  But you—­you must wear stockings in your shoes all the year round.”