Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian Part 3

"Oh! 't is all the same to me if master can get on without 'em."

"Don't you see, Pekka, what is hanging down from the rafters there?"

When father put this question he looked proudly up at the lamp, and then he looked pityingly down upon Pekka.

Pekka put his clod in the corner, and then, but not till then, looked up at the lamp.

"It's a lamp," says father, "and when it burns you don't want any more pare light."

"Oh!" said Pekka, and, without a single word more, he went off to his chopping-block behind the stable, and all day long, just as on other days, he chopped a branch of his own height into little f.a.gots; but all the rest of us were scarce able to get on with anything. Mother made believe to spin, but her supply of flax had not diminished by one-half when she shoved aside the spindle and went out. Father chipped away at first at the handle of his axe, but the work must have been a little against the grain, for he left it half done. After mother went away, father went out also, but whether he went to town or not I don't know.

At any rate he forbade us to go out too, and promised us a whipping if we so much as touched the lamp with the tips of our fingers. Why, we should as soon have thought of fingering the priest's gold-embroidered chasuble. We were only afraid that the cord which held up all this splendor might break and we should get the blame of it.

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 pa.s.sed 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.

But what we could not make out at all was how the fire was put into that sort of gla.s.s. We asked mother, but she said we should see how it was done afterward.

The townsfolk vied with each other in praising the lamp, and one said one thing, and another said another. The innkeeper's old mother maintained that it shone just as calmly and brightly as the stars of heaven. The magistrate, who had sad eyes, thought it excellent because it didn't smoke, and you could burn it right in the middle of the hall without blackening the walls in the least, to which father replied that it was, in fact, meant for the hall, but did capitally for the dwelling room as well, and one had no need now to dash hither and thither with parea, for all could now see by a single light, let them be never so many.

When mother observed that the lesser chandelier in church scarcely gave a better light, father bade me take my ABC book, and go to the door to see if I could read it there. I went and began to read: "Our Father."

But then they all said: "The lad knows that by heart." Mother then stuck a hymn-book in my hand, and I set off with "By the Waters of Babylon."

"Yes; it is perfectly marvellous!" was the testimony of the townsfolk.

Then said father: "Now if any one had a needle, you might throw it on the floor and you would see that it would be found at once."

The magistrate's step-daughter had a needle in her bosom, but when she threw it on the floor, it fell into a crack, and we couldn't find it at all--it was so small.

It was only after the townsfolk had gone that Pekka came in.

He blinked a bit at first at the unusual lamplight, but then calmly proceeded to take off his jacket and rag boots.

"What's that twinkling in the roof there enough to put your eyes out?"

he asked at last, when he had hung his stockings up on the rafters.

"Come now, guess what it is," said father, and he winked at mother and us.

"I can't guess," said Pekka, and he came nearer to the lamp.

"Perhaps it's the church chandelier, eh?" said father jokingly.

"Perhaps," admitted Pekka; but he had become really curious, and pa.s.sed his thumb along the lamp.

"There's no need to finger it," says father; "look at it, but don't touch it."

"All right, all right! I don't want to meddle with it!" said Pekka, a little put out, and he drew back to the bench alongside the wall by the door.

Mother must have thought that it was a sin to treat poor Pekka so, for she began to explain to him that it was not a church chandelier at all, but what people called a lamp, and that it was lit with oil, and that was why people didn't want parea any more.

But Pekka was so little enlightened by the whole explanation that he immediately began to split up the pare-wood log which he had dragged into the room the day before. Then father said to him that he had already told him there was no need to split parea any more.

"Oh! I quite forgot," said Pekka; "but there it may bide if it isn't wanted any more," and with that Pekka drove his pare knife into a rift in the wall.

"There let it rest at leisure," said father.

But Pekka said never a word more. A little while after that he began to patch up his boots, stretched on tiptoe to reach down a pare from the rafters, lit it, stuck it in a slit f.a.got, and sat him down on his little stool by the stove. We children saw this before father, who stood with his back to Pekka planing away at his axe-shaft under the lamp. We said nothing, however, but laughed and whispered among ourselves, "If only father sees that, what will he say, I wonder?" And when father did catch sight of him, he planted himself arms akimbo in front of Pekka, and asked him, quite spitefully, what sort of fine work he had there, since he must needs have a separate light all to himself?

"I am only patching up my shoes," said Pekka to father.