Brilliant success for Oline. Isak has to give in, as he has done many a time before.
But Oline had more to say. "And if you mean I'm to go here clean barefoot, with the winter coming on and all, and never own the like of a pair of shoes, why, you'll please to say so. I said a word of it three and four weeks gone, that I needed shoes, but never sign of a shoe to this day, and here I am."
Said Isak: "What's wrong with your pattens, then, that you can't use them?"
"What's wrong with them?" repeats Oline, all unprepared.
"Ay, that's what I'd like to know."
"With my pattens?"
"Ay."
"Well … and me carding and spinning, and tending cattle and sheep and all, looking after children here—have you nothing to say to that? I'd like to know; that wife of yours that's in prison for her deeds, did you let her go barefoot in the snow?"
"She wore her pattens," said Isak. "And for going to church and visiting and the like, why, rough hide was good enough for her."
"Ay, and all the finer for it, no doubt."