"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.
"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 fagot, 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?