"What d'you give for those you've got on?"

"I can't remember, but it was nothing very much. Couldn't say exactly what
it was."

Grindhusen looks at me in astonishment and bursts out laughing.

"What? Can't remember what you paid for them?"

Then he turns serious, shakes his head, and says: "No, I dare say you
wouldn't. No. That's the way when you've money enough and beyond."

Old Gunhild comes out from the house, and seeing us standing there by the
chopping-block wasting time in idle talk, she tells Grindhusen he'd better
start on the painting.

"So you've turned painter now?" said I.

Grindhusen made no answer, and I saw I had said a thing that should not
have been said in others' hearing.




III


Grindhusen works away a couple of hours with his putty and paint, and soon
one side of the little house, the north side, facing the sea, is done all