Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Scandinavian).djvu/35

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WHEN FATHER BROUGHT HOME THE LAMP.
27

"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 glass here, the light cannot creep up to the top, where it is n't wanted either, but spreads out downward, so that you could find a needle on the floor."

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

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

"Look, father! Pekka has been splitting päreä 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 had n't been ashamed, when I called to mind that the lamp was not to be lit