“Oh, yes!  Isn’t it one of those things which shines in the middle of the room so that we can see to read in every corner, just as if it was broad daylight?”

“That’s just it.  There’s oil that burns in it, and you only have to light it of an evening, and it burns on without going out till the next morning.”

“But how can the wet oil burn?”

“You might as well ask—­how can brandy burn?”

“But it might set the whole place on fire.  When brandy begins to burn you can’t put it out, even with water.”

“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.”