"H'm, Calving, you say?"

"As if you didn't know! But what do you think now about that same
calf. Let it stay and be weaned, maybe?"

"Do as you think; 'tis none of my business with calves and things."

"Well, 'twould be a pity to eat up calf, seems to me. And leave us
with but one cow on the place."

"Don't seem to me like you'd do that anyway," says Isak.

That was their way. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of
growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the
earth.

And Goldenhorns calved. A great day in the wilderness, a joy and a
delight. They gave her flour-wash, and Isak himself saw to it there
was no stint of flour, though he had carried it all the way himself,
on his back. And there lay a pretty calf, a beauty, red-flanked like
her mother, and comically bewildered at the miracle of coming into the
world. In a couple of years she would be having calves of her own.

"'Twill be a grand fine cow when she grows up," said Inger. "And what
are we to call her, now? I can't think."

Inger was childish in her ways, and no clever wit for anything.

"Call her?" said Isak. "Why, Silverhorns, of course; what else?"