"What do you mean?" asks Oline in a strangely gentle voice.
"Ah, don't deny it!" cries Inger, her eyes wild. "I'll break your face in with this ladle here—see that!"
Struck her? Ay, she did so. Oline took the first blow without falling, and only cried out: "Mind what you're doing, woman! I know what I know about you and your doings!" Inger strikes again, gets Oline down to the floor, falls on her there, and thrusts her knees into her.
"D'you mean to murder me?" asks Oline. The terrible woman with the hare-lip was kneeling on her, a great strong creature armed with a huge wooden ladle, heavy as a club. Oline was bruised already, and bleeding, but still sullenly refusing to cry out. "So you're trying to murder me too!"
"Ay, kill you," says Inger, striking again. "There! I'll see you dead before I've done with you." She was certain of it now. Oline knew her secret; nothing mattered now. "I'll spoil your beastly face."
"Beastly face?" gasps Oline. "Huh! Look to your own. With the Lord His mark on it!"
Oline is hard, and will not give in; Inger is forced to give over the blows that are exhausting her own strength. But she threatens still—glares into the other's eyes and swears she has not finished with her yet. "There's more to come, ay, more, more. Wait till I get a knife. I'll show you!"
She gets on her feet again, and moves as if to look for a knife, a table knife. But now her fury is past its worst, and she falls back on curses and abuse. Oline heaves herself up to the bench again, her face all blue and yellow, swollen and bleeding; she wipes the hair from her forehead, straightens her kerchief, and spits; her mouth too is bruised and swollen.
"You devil!" she says.
"You've been nosing about in the woods!" cries Inger. "That's what you've been doing. You've found that little bit of a grave there. Better if you'd dug one for yourself the same time."