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Page 4
"How can the place be set on fire when the oil is shut up in a
glass, and the fire as well?"
"In a glass? How can fire burn in a glass--won't it burst?"
"Won't what burst?"
"The glass."
"Burst! No, it never bursts. It might burst, I grant you, if you
screwed the fire up too high, but you're not obliged to do that."
"Screw up the fire? Nay, dear, you're joking--how CAN you screw up
fire?"
"Listen, now! When you turn the screw to the right, the wick
mounts--the lamp, you know, has a wick, like any common candle,
and a flame too--but if you turn the screw to the left, the flame
gets smaller, and then, when you blow it, it goes out."
"It goes out! Of course! I But I don't understand it a bit yet,
however much you may explain--some sort of new-fangled gentlefolk
arrangement, I suppose."
"You'll understand it right enough when I've bought one."
"How much does it cost?"
"Seven and a half marks, and the oil separate at one mark the
can."
"Seven and a half marks and the oil as well! Why, for that you
might buy parea for many a long day--that is, of course, if you
were inclined to waste money on such things at all, but when Pekka
splits them not a penny is lost."
"And you'll lose nothing by the lamp, either! Pare wood costs
money too, and you can't find it everywhere on our land now as you
used to. You have to get leave to look for such wood, and drag it
hither to the bog from the most out-of-the-way places--and it's
soon used up, too."
Mother knew well enough that pare wood is not so quickly used up
as all that, as nothing had been said about it up to now, and that
it was only an excuse to go away and buy this lamp. But she wisely
held her tongue so as not to vex father, for then the lamp and all
would have been unbought and unseen. Or else some one else might
manage to get a lamp first for his farm, and then the whole parish
would begin talking about the farm that had been the FIRST, after
the parsonage, to use a lighted lamp. So mother thought the matter
over, and then she said to father:
"Buy it, if you like; it is all the same to me if it is a pare
that burns, or any other sort of oil, if only I can see to spin.
When, pray, do you think of buying it?"
"I thought of setting off to-morrow--I have some other little
business with the storekeeper as well."
It was now the middle of the week, and mother knew very well that
the other business could very well wait till Saturday, but she did
not say anything now either, but, "the sooner the better," thought
she.
And that same evening father brought in from the storehouse the
big travelling chest in which grandfather, in his time, had stowed
his provisions when he came from Uleaborg, and bade mother fill it
with hay and lay a little cotton-wool in the middle of it. We
children asked why they put nothing in the box but hay and a
little wool in the middle, but she bade us hold our tongues, the
whole lot of us. Father was in a better humor, and explained that
he was going to bring a lamp from the storekeeper, and that it was
of glass, and might be broken to bits if he stumbled or if the
sledge bumped too much.
That evening we children lay awake a long time and thought of the
new lamp; but old scullery-Pekka, the man who used to split up all
the parea, began to snore as soon as ever the evening pare was put
out. And he didn't once ask what sort of a thing the lamp was,
although we talked about it ever so much.
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