Part 11 (1/2)

”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.”

”Ay, you wait,” says Oline, her eyes glowing revengefully. ”I'll say no more--but you wait--there'll be no fine two-roomed house for you, with musical clocks and all.”

”You can't take it from me, anyway!”

”Ay, you wait. You'll see what Oline can do.”

And so they keep on. Oline does not curse, and hardly raises her voice; there is something almost gentle in her cold cruelty, but she is bitterly dangerous. ”Where's that bundle? I left it in the woods.

But you shall have it back--I'll not own your wool.”

”Ho, you think I've stolen it, maybe.”

”Ah, you know best what you've done.”

So back and forth again about the wool. Inger offers to show the very sheep it was cut from. Oline asks quietly, smoothly: ”Ay, but who knows where you got the first sheep to start with?”

Inger names the place and people where her first sheep were out to keep with their lambs. ”And you mind and care and look to what you're saying,” says she threateningly. ”Guard your mouth, or you'll be sorry.”

”Ha ha ha!” laughs Oline softly. Oline is never at a loss, never to be silenced. ”My mouth, eh? And what of your own, my dear?” She points to Inger's hare-lip, calling her a ghastly sight for G.o.d and man.

Inger answers furiously, and Oline being fat, she calls her a lump of blubber--”a lump of dog's blubber like you. You sent me a hare--I'll pay you for that.”

”Hare again?” says Oline. ”If I'd no more guilt in anything than I have about that hare. What was it like?”

”What was it like? Why, what's a hare always like?”

”Like you. The very image.”

”Out with you--get out!” shrieks Inger.

”'Twas you sent Os-Anders with that hare. I'll have you punished; I'll have you put in prison for that.”