"Ay," said Isak, for politeness' sake. He felt a sort of pity for
Geissler at the moment. Oh, that good man did not look as if he could
afford to keep clerks; had to work hard enough by himself, belike.
That jacket—it was worn to fringes at the wrists.
"Won't you have some dry hose to put on?" said Inger, and brought out a pair of her own. They were from her best days; fine and thin, with a border.
"No, thanks," said Geissler shortly, though he must have been wet through.—"Much better have come to me," he said again, speaking of Eleseus. "I want him badly." He took a small silver tobacco box from his pocket and sat playing with it in his fingers. It was perhaps the only thing of value left him now.
But Geissler was restless, changing from one thing to another. He slipped the thing back into his pocket again and started a new theme. "But—what's that? Why, the meadow that's all grey. I thought it was the shadow. The ground is simply parched. Come along with me, Sivert."
He rose from the table suddenly, thinking no more of food, turned in the doorway to say "Thank you" to Inger for the meal, and disappeared, Sivert following.
They went across to the river, Geissler peering keenly about all the time. "Here!" he cried, and stopped. And then he explained: "Where's the sense of letting your land dry up to nothing when you've a river there big enough to drown it in a minute? We'll have, that meadow green by tomorrow!"
Sivert, all astonishment, said "Yes."
"Dig down obliquely from here, see?—on a slope. The ground's level; have to make some sort of a channel. You've a sawmill there—I suppose you can find some long planks from somewhere? Good! Run and fetch a pick and spade, and start here; I'll go back and mark out a proper line."
He ran up to the house again, his boots squelching, for they were wet through. He set Isak to work making pipes, a whole lot of them, to be laid down where the ground could not well be cut with ditches. Isak tried to object that the water might not get so far; the dry ground would soak it up before it reached the parched fields. Geissler explained that it would take some time; the earth must drink a little first, but then gradually the water would go on—"field and meadow green by this time tomorrow."
"Ho!" said Isak, and fell to boxing up long planks as hard as he could.