Nothing, no, of course. But now, look you, 'twas Leopoldine's turn to be affected, to begin the same eternal round. She was well fitted for the same, overgrown and pretty and newly confirmed; an excellent sacrifice she would make. A bird is fluttering in her young breast, her long hands are like her mother's, full of tenderness, full of sex. Could she dance?--ay, indeed she could. A marvel where she had managed to learn it, but learn it they did at Sellanraa as well as elsewhere. Sivert could dance, and Leopoldine too; a kind of dancing peculiar to the spot, growth of the new-cleared soil; a dance with energy and swing: schottische, mazurka, waltz and polka in one. And could not Leopoldine deck herself out and fall in love and dream by daylight all awake? Ay, as well as any other! The day she stood in church she was allowed to borrow her mother's gold ring to wear; no sin in that, 'twas only neat and nice; and the day after, going to her communion, she did not get the ring on till it was over. Ay, she might well show herself in church with a gold ring on her finger, being the daughter of a great man on the place--the Margrave. When Andresen came down from the mine, he found Isak at Sellanraa, and they asked him in, gave him dinner and a cup of coffee. All the folk on the place were in there together now, and took part in the conversation. Andresen explained that his master, Aronsen, had sent him up to see how things were at the mines, if there was any sign of beginning work there again soon. Heaven knows, maybe Andresen sat there lying all the time, about being sent by his master; he might just as well have hit on it for his own account--and anyway, he couldn't have been at the mines at all in the little time he'd been away. "'Tis none so easy to see from outside if they're going to start work again," said Isak. No, Andresen admitted that was so; but Aronsen had sent him, and after all, two pair of eyes could see better than one. But here Inger seemingly could contain herself no longer; she asked: "Is it true what they're saying, Aronsen is going to sell his place again?" Andresen answers: "He's thinking of it. And a man like him can surely do as he likes, seeing all the means and riches he's got." "Ho, is he so rich, then?" "Ay," says Andresen, nodding his head; "rich enough, and that's a true word." Again Inger cannot keep silence, but asks right out: "I wonder, now, what he'd be asking for the place?" Isak puts in a word here; like as not he's more curious to know than Inger herself, but it must not seem that the idea of buying Storborg is any thought of his; he makes himself a stranger to it, and says now: "Why, what you want to know for, Inger?" "I was but asking," says she. And both of them look at Andresen, waiting. And he answers: Answers cautiously enough that as to the price, he can say nothing of that, but he knows what Aronsen says the place has cost him.