“But they’re too short,” said Isak.

“They’re worn that way in town,” said Inger.  “You know nothing about it.”

Isak saw he had gone too far, and, to make up for it, said something about getting some material for Inger herself, for something or other.

“For a cloak?” said Inger.

“Ay, or what you’d like.”

Inger agreed to have something for a cloak, and described the sort of stuff she wanted.

But when she had made the cloak, she had to find some one to show it to; accordingly, when the boys went down to the village to be put to school, Inger herself went with them.  And that journey might have seemed a little thing, but it left its mark.

They came first of all to Breidablik, and the Breidablik woman and her children came out to see who it was going by.  There sat Inger and the two boys, driving down lordly-wise—­the boys on their way to school, nothing less, and Inger wearing a cloak.  The Breidablik woman felt a sting at the sight; the cloak she could have done without—­thank heaven, she set no store by such foolishness!—­but ... she had children of her own—­Barbro, a great girl already, Helge, the next, and Kathrine, all of an age for school.  The two eldest had been to school before, when they lived down in the village, but after moving up to Breidablik, to an out-of-the-way place up on the moors, they had been forced to give it up, and let the children run heathen again.

“You’ll be wanting a bite for the boys, maybe,” said the woman.

“Food?  Do you see this chest here?  It’s my travelling trunk, that I brought home with me—­I’ve that full of food.”

“And what’ll be in it of sorts?”

“What sorts?  I’ve meat and pork in plenty, and bread and butter and cheese besides.”

“Ay, you’ve no lack up at Sellanraa,” said the other; and her poor, sallow-faced children listened with eyes and ears to this talk of rich things to eat.  “And where will they be staying?” asked the mother.

“At the blacksmith’s,” said Inger.

“Ho!” said the other.  “Ay, mine’ll be going to school again soon.  They’ll stay with the Lensmand.”

“Ho!” said Inger.

“Ay, or at the doctor’s, maybe, or at the parsonage.  Brede he’s in with the great folks there, of course.”

Inger fumbled with her cloak, and managed to turn it so that a bit of black silk fringe appeared to advantage.

“Where did you get the cloak?” asked, the woman.  “One you had with you, maybe?”

“I made it myself.”

“Ay, ay, ’tis as I said:  wealth and riches full and running over....”

Inger drove on, feeling all set up and pleased with herself, and, coming into the village, she may have been a trifle overproud in her bearing.  Lensmand Heyerdahl’s lady was not pleased at the sight of that cloak; the Sellanraa woman was forgetting her place—­forgetting where it was she had come from after five years’ absence.  But Inger had at least a chance of showing off her cloak, and the storekeeper’s wife and the blacksmith’s wife and the schoolmaster’s wife all thought of getting one like it for themselves—­but it could wait a bit.