Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian Part 2

"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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 gla.s.s, and might be broken to bits if he stumbled or if the sledge b.u.mped 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.

The journey took father all day, and a very long time it seemed to us all. We didn't even relish our food that day, although we had milk soup for dinner. But scullery-Pekka gobbled and guzzled as much as all of us put together, and spent the day in splitting parea till he had filled the outhouse full. Mother, too, didn't spin much flax that day either, for she kept on going to the window and peeping out, over the ice, after father. She said to Pekka, now and then, that perhaps we shouldn't want all those parea any more, but Pekka couldn't have laid it very much to heart, for he didn't so much as ask the reason why.

It was not till supper time that we heard the horses' bells in the courtyard.

With the bread crumbs in our mouths, we children rushed out, but father drove us in again and bade scullery-Pekka come and help with the chest.

Pekka, who had already been dozing away on the bench by the stove, was so awkward as to knock the chest against the threshold as he was helping father to carry it into the room, and he would most certainly have got a sound drubbing for it from father if only he had been younger, but he was an old fellow now, and father had never in his life struck a man older than himself. Nevertheless, Pekka would have heard a thing or two from father if the lamp HAD gone to pieces, but fortunately no damage had been done.

"Get up on the stove, you lout!" roared father at Pekka, and up on the stove Pekka crept.

But father had already taken the lamp out of the chest, and now let it hang down from one hand.

"Look! there it is now! How do you think it looks? You pour the oil into this gla.s.s, and that stump of ribbon inside is the wick--hold that pare a little further off, will you!"

"Shall we light it?" said mother, as she drew back.

"Are you mad? How can it be lighted when there's no oil in it?"

"Well, but can't you pour some in, then?"

"Pour in oil? A likely tale! Yes, that's just the way when people don't understand these things; but the storekeeper warned me again and again never to pour the oil in by firelight, as it might catch fire and burn the whole house down."

"Then when will you pour the oil into it!"

"In the daytime--daytime, d'ye hear? Can't you wait till day? It isn't such a great marvel as all that." "Have you SEEN it burn, then?"

"Of course I have. What a question! I've seen it burn many a time, both at the parsonage and when we tried this one here at the storekeeper's."

"And it burned, did it?"

"Burned? Of course it did, and when we put up the shutters of the shop, you could have seen a needle on the floor. Look here, now! Here's a sort of capsule, and when the fire is burning in this fixed gla.s.s here, the light cannot creep up to the top, where it isn't wanted either, but spreads out downward, so that you could find a needle an the floor."

Now we should have all very much liked to try if we could find a needle on the floor, but father rang up the lamp to the roof and began to eat his supper.

"This evening we must be content, once more, with a pare," said father, as he ate; "but to-morrow the lamp shall burn in this very house."

"Look, father! Pekka has been splitting parea all day, and filled the outhouse with them."

"That's all right. We've fuel now, at any rate, to last us all the winter, for we sha'n't want them for anything else."

"But how about the bathroom and the stable?" said mother.

"In the bathroom we'll burn the lamp," said father.

That night I slept still less than the night before, and when I woke in the morning I could almost have wept, if I hadn't been ashamed, when I called to mind that the lamp was not to be lit till the evening. I had dreamed that father had poured oil into the lamp at night and that it had burned the whole day long.

Immediately when it began to dawn, father dug up out of that great travelling chest of his a big bottle, and poured something out of it into a smaller bottle. We should have very much liked to ask what was in this bottle, but we daren't, for father looked so solemn about it that it quite frightened us.

But when he drew the lamp a little lower down from the ceiling and began to bustle about it and unscrew it, mother could contain herself no longer, and asked him what he was doing.

"I am pouring oil into the lamp."

"Well, but you're taking it to pieces! How will you ever get everything you have unscrewed into its proper place again?"

Neither mother nor we knew what to call the thing which father took out from the gla.s.s holder.

Father said nothing, but he bade us keep further off. Then he filled the gla.s.s holder nearly full from the smaller bottle, and we now guessed that there was oil in the larger bottle also.

"Well, won't you light it now?" asked mother again, when all the unscrewed things had been put back into their places and father hoisted the lamp up to the ceiling again.

"What! in the daytime?"

"Yes--surely we might try it, to see how it will burn."

"It'll burn right enough. Just wait till the evening, and don't bother."

After dinner, scullery-Pekka brought in a large frozen block of wood to split up into parea, and cast it from his shoulders on to the floor with a thud which shook the whole room and set in motion the oil in the lamp.

"Steady!" cries father; "what are you making that row for?"

"I brought in this pare-block to melt it a bit--nothing else will do it--it is regularly frozen."

"You may save yourself the trouble then," said father, and he winked at us.

"Well, but you can't get a blaze out of it at all, otherwise."

"You may save yourself the trouble, I say."

"Are no more parea to be split up, then?"

"Well, suppose I DID say that no more parea were to be split up?"