Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Scandinavian).djvu/31

Rh "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 päreä 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! Päre 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 päre 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 päre that burns, or any other sort of oil, if only I can see to spin. When, pray, do you think of buying it?"