Ho, that Isak with his secrets and his lordly ways! But it pleased him, maybe, to have her asking and wondering, and curious about his doings. He ate a bit, and sat for a while in the hut before going out again. What could he be waiting for? "H'm," says he at last, getting up. "This won't do. Can't sit here idling today. Work to be done." "Seems like you're building," says Inger. "What?" And he answered condescendingly, this great man who went about building with timber all by himself, he answered: "Why, you can see as much, I take it." "Yes.... Yes, of course." "Building--why, there's no help for it as I can see.. Here's you come bringing a whole cow to the farm--that means a cowshed, I suppose?" Poor Inger, not so eternally wise as he, as Isak, that lord of creation. And this was before she learned to know him, and reckon with his way of putting things. Says Inger: "Why, it's never a cowshed you're building, surely?" "Ho," says he. "But you don't mean it? I--I thought you'd be building a house first." "Think so?" says Isak, putting up a face as if he'd never in life have thought of that himself. "Why yes. And put the beasts in the hut." Isak thought for a bit. "Ay, maybe 'twould be best so." "There," says Inger, all glad and triumphant. "You see I'm some good after all." "Ay, that's true. And what'd you say to a house with two rooms in?" "_Two_ rooms? Oh ...! Why, 'twould be just like other folks. Do you think we could?" They did. Isak he went about building, notching his baulks and fitting up his framework; also he managed a hearth and fireplace of picked stones, though this last was troublesome, and Isak himself was not always pleased with his work. Haytime came, and he was forced to climb down from his building and go about the hillsides far and near, cutting grass and bearing home the hay in mighty loads. Then one rainy day he must go down to the village. "What you want in the village?" "Well, I can't say exactly as yet...." He set off, and stayed away two days, and came Back with a cooking-stove--a barge of a man surging up through the forest with a whole iron stove on his back. "'Tis more than a man can do," said Inger. "You'll kill yourself that gait." But Isak pulled down the stone hearth, that didn't look so well in the new house, and set up the cooking-stove in its place. "'Tisn't every one has a cooking-stove," said Inger. "Of all the wonders, how we're getting on!..."