No, Isak would not have gone down today
for the new horse if it hadn't been for that machine.
He stands with a marvellously keen expression, going over in his mind
from beginning to end the instructions for use that the storekeeper
had read out; he sets a spring here, and shifts a bolt there, then he
oils every hole and every crevice, then he looks over the whole thing
once more. Isak had never known such an hour in his life. To pick up a
pen and write one's mark on a paper, a document--ay, 'twas a perilous
great thing that, no doubt. Likewise in the matter of a new harrow he
had once brought up--there were many curiously twisted parts in that
to be considered. Not to speak of the great circular saw that had to
be set in its course to the nicety of a pencil line, never
swaying east nor west, lest it should fly asunder. But this--this
mowing-machine of his--'twas a crawling nest of steel springs and
hooks and apparatus, and hundreds of screws--Inger's sewing-machine
was a bookmarker compared with this!
Isak harnessed himself to the shafts and tried the thing.
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