"How d'you mean?" asked the son. "What to do with it?"
"Why, I don't know. There's the school there, and it's midway down
this tract now."
"And what then?" asked the son. "I don't know what we'd do with it,
though; it's not worth much as it is."
"That's what you've been thinking of?"
"No, not that way.... Unless Eleseus he'd like to have the place to
work on."
"Eleseus? Well, no, I don't know--"
Long pause, the two men thinking hard. The father begins gathering
tools together, packing up to go home.
"Ay, unless ..." said Sivert. "You might ask him what he says."
The father made an end of the matter thus: "Well, there's another day,
and we haven't found that door-slab yet, either."
Next day was Saturday, and they had to be off early to get across the
hills with the child. Jensine, the servant-girl, was to go with them;
that was one godmother, the rest they would have to find from among
Inger's folk on the other side.
Inger looked nice; she had made herself a dainty cotton dress, with
white at the neck and wrists. The child was all in white, with a new
blue silk ribbon drawn through the lower edge of its dress; but then
she was a wonder of a child, to be sure, that could smile and chatter
already, and lay and listened when the clock struck on the wall. Her
father had chosen her name. It was his right; he was determined to
have his say--only trust to him! He had hesitated between Jacobine and
Rebecca, as being both sort of related to Isak; and at last he went to
Inger and asked timidly: "What d'you think, now, of Rebecca?"
"Why, yes," said Inger.
And when Isak heard that, he grew suddenly independent and master in
his own house. "If she's to have a name at all," he said sharply, "it
shall be Rebecca! I'll see to that."
And of course he was going with the party to church, partly to carry,
and partly for propriety's sake. It would never do to let Rebecca go
to be christened without a decent following! Isak trimmed his beard
and put on a red shirt, as in his younger days; it was in the worst of
the hot weather, but he had a nice new winter suit, that looked well
on him, and he wore it. But for all that, Isak was not the man to make
a duty of finery and show; as now, for instance, he put on a pair of
fabulously heavy boots for the march.
Sivert and Leopoldine stayed behind to look after the place.
Then they rowed in a boat across the lake, and that was a deal easier
than before, when they had had to walk round all the way. But half-way
across, as Inger unfastened her dress to nurse the child, Isak noticed
something bright hung in a string round her neck; whatever it might
be. And in the church he noticed that she wore that gold ring on her
finger. Oh, Inger--it had been too much for her after all!
Chapter XVII
Eleseus came home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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