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Page 7
But time hung heavily in the sitting-room, and as we couldn't hit
upon anything else, we resolved to go in a body to the sleighing
hill. The town had a right of way to the river for fetching water
therefrom, and this road ended at the foot of a good hill down
which the sleigh could run, and then up the other side along the
ice rift.
"Here come the Lamphill children," cried the children of the town,
as soon as they saw us.
We understood well enough what they meant, but for all that we did
not ask what Lamphill children they alluded to, for our farm was,
of course, never called Lamphill.
"Ah, ah! We know! You've gone and bought one of them lamps for
your place. We know all about it!"
"But how came you to know about it already?"
"Your mother mentioned it to my mother when she went through our
place. She said that your father had bought from the storeman one
of that sort of lamps that burn so brightly that one can find a
needle on the floor--so at least said the justice's maid."
It is just like the lamp in the parsonage drawing-room, your
father told us just now. I heard him say so with my own ears,"
said the innkeeper's lad.
"Then you really have got a lamp like that, eh?" inquired all the
children of the town.
"Yes, we have; but it is nothing to look at in the daytime, but in
the evening we'll all go there together."
And we went on sleighing down hill and up hill till dusk, and every
time we drew our sleighs up to the hilltop, we talked about the lamp
with the children of the town.
In this way the time passed quicker than we thought, and when we
had sped down the hill for the last time, the whole lot of us
sprang off homeward.
Pekka was standing at the chopping block and didn't even turn his
head, although we all called to him with one voice to come and see
how the lamp was lit. We children plunged headlong into the room
in a body.
But at the door we stood stock-still. The lamp was already burning
there beneath the rafters so brightly that we couldn't look at it
without blinking.
"Shut the door; it's rare cold," cried father, from behind the
table.
"They scurry about like fowls in windy weather," grumbled mother
from her place by the fireside.
"No wonder the children are dazed by it, when I, old woman as I
am, cannot help looking up at it," said the innkeeper's old
mother.
"Our maid also will never get over it," said the magistrate's
step-daughter.
It was only when our eyes had got a little used to the light that
we saw that the room was half full of neighbors.
"Come nearer, children, that you may see it properly," said
father, in a much milder voice than just before.
"Knock that snow off your feet, and come hither to the stove; it
looks quite splendid from here," said mother, in her turn.
Skipping and jumping, we went toward mother, and sat us all down
in a row on the bench beside her. It was only when we were under
her wing that we dared to examine the lamp more critically. We had
never once thought that it would burn as it was burning now, but
when we came to sift the matter out we arrived at the conclusion
that, after all, it was burning just as it ought to burn. And when
we had peeped at it a good bit longer, it seemed to us as if we
had fancied all along that it would be exactly as it was.
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