The commissioners had gathered round the table, looked indifferently at the map and now gradually began to speak, but, as it seemed, more for the sake of saying something. When they came to discuss the engaging of a surveyor one of the younger ones said: "You have thought it out, dikegrave; you must know who would be best fitted for the work."
But Hauke replied: "As you are all under oath you must speak your own, not my opinion, Jacob Meyen; and if you can do better I will let my proposal drop."
"Oh well, it will be right enough," said Jacob Meyen.
But one of the older men did not think so. He had a nephew who was a surveyor, such a surveyor as had never been seen here in the marsh country; he was said to know even more than the dikegrave's blessed father, Tede Haien!
So the merits of both surveyors were discussed and it was finally decided to give the work to them both together. It was the same thing when they came to consider the tip-carts, the straw supply, and everything else, and Hauke arrived home late and almost exhausted, on the gelding which he still rode at that time. But he had no sooner sat down in the old easy chair which had belonged to his predecessor, who, though more ponderous, had lived more lightly, than his wife was at his side. "You look so tired, Hauke," she said, stroking the hair away from his forehead with her slender hand.
"I am, a little," he answered.
"And how is it going?"
"Oh, it's going," he said with a bitter smile; "but I must turn the wheels myself and I can be glad if somebody else does not hold them back."
"But they don't all do that, do they?"
"No, Elke; your godfather, Jewe Manners, is a good man; I wish he were thirty years younger."