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.
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