"But they're too short," said Isak.
"They're worn that way in town," said Inger. "You know nothing about it."
Isak saw he had gone too far, and, to make up for it, said something about getting some material for Inger herself, for something or other.
"For a cloak?" said Inger.
"Ay, or what you'd like."
Inger agreed to have something for a cloak, and described the sort of stuff she wanted.
But when she had made the cloak, she had to find some one to show it to; accordingly, when the boys went down to the village to be put to school, Inger herself went with them. And that journey might have seemed a little thing, but it left its mark.
They came first of all to Breidablik, and the Breidablik woman and her children came out to see who it was going by. There sat Inger and the two boys, driving down lordly-wise—the boys on their way to school, nothing less, and Inger wearing a cloak. The Breidablik woman felt a sting at the sight; the cloak she could have done without—thank heaven, she set no store by such foolishness!—but … she had children of her own—Barbro, a great girl already, Helge, the next, and Kathrine, all of an age for school. The two eldest had been to school before, when they lived down in the village, but after moving up to Breidablik, to an out-of-the-way place up on the moors, they had been forced to give it up, and let the children run heathen again.
"You'll be wanting a bite for the boys, maybe," said the woman.
"Food? Do you see this chest here? It's my travelling trunk, that I brought home with me—I've that full of food."