But what we could not make out at all was how the fire was put into that sort of glass.  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 passed 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.