It was now the middle of the week, and mother knew very well that the other business could very well wait till Saturday, 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 glass, and might be broken to bits if he stumbled or if the sledge bumped 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 glass, 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.