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28 till the evening. I had dreamed that father had poured oil into the lamp at night and that it had burned the whole day long.

Immediately when it began to dawn, father dug up out of that great travelling chest of his a big bottle, and poured something out of it into a smaller bottle. We should have very much liked to ask what was in this bottle, but we daren't, for father looked so solemn about it that it quite frightened us.

But when he drew the lamp a little lower down from the ceiling and began to bustle about it and unscrew it, mother could contain herself no longer, and asked him what he was doing.

"I am pouring oil into the lamp."

"Well, but you're taking it to pieces! How will you ever get everything you have unscrewed into its proper place again?"

Neither mother nor we knew what to call the thing which father took out from the glass holder.

Father said nothing, but he bade us keep further off. Then he filled the glass holder nearly full from the smaller bottle, and we now guessed that there was oil in the larger bottle also.

"Well, won't you light it now?" asked mother again, when all the unscrewed things had been put back into their places and father hoisted the lamp up to the ceiling again.

"What! in the daytime?"