Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Scandinavian).djvu/43

Rh "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 did n't want päreä any more.

But Pekka was so little enlightened by the whole explanation that he immediately began to split up the päre-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 päreä any more.

"Oh! I quite forgot," said Pekka; "but there it may bide if it is n't wanted any more," and with that Pekka drove his päre knife into a rift in the wall.

"There let it rest at leisure," said father.