With the bread crumbs in our mouths, we children rushed out, but father drove us in again and bade scullery-Pekka come and help with the chest. Pekka, who had already been dozing away on the bench by the stove, was so awkward as to knock the chest against the threshold as he was helping father to carry it into the room, and he would most certainly have got a sound drubbing for it from father if only he had been younger, but he was an old fellow now, and father had never in his life struck a man older than himself. Nevertheless, Pekka would have heard a thing or two from father if the lamp HAD gone to pieces, but fortunately no damage had been done. "Get up on the stove, you lout!" roared father at Pekka, and up on the stove Pekka crept. But father had already taken the lamp out of the chest, and now let it hang down from one hand. "Look! there it is now! How do you think it looks? You pour the oil into this glass, and that stump of ribbon inside is the wick--hold that pare a little further off, will you!" "Shall we light it?" said mother, as she drew back. "Are you mad? How can it be lighted when there's no oil in it?" "Well, but can't you pour some in, then?" "Pour in oil? A likely tale! Yes, that's just the way when people don't understand these things; but the storekeeper warned me again and again never to pour the oil in by firelight, as it might catch fire and burn the whole house down." "Then when will you pour the oil into it!" "In the daytime--daytime, d'ye hear? Can't you wait till day? It isn't such a great marvel as all that." "Have you SEEN it burn, then?" "Of course I have. What a question! I've seen it burn many a time, both at the parsonage and when we tried this one here at the storekeeper's." "And it burned, did it?" "Burned? Of course it did, and when we put up the shutters of the shop, you could have seen a needle on the floor. Look here, now! Here's a sort of capsule, and when the fire is burning in this fixed glass here, the light cannot creep up to the top, where it isn't wanted either, but spreads out downward, so that you could find a needle an the floor." Now we should have all very much liked to try if we could find a needle on the floor, but father rang up the lamp to the roof and began to eat his supper. "This evening we must be content, once more, with a pare," said father, as he ate; "but to-morrow the lamp shall burn in this very house." "Look, father! Pekka has been splitting parea all day, and filled the outhouse with them." "That's all right. We've fuel now, at any rate, to last us all the winter, for we sha'n't want them for anything else." "But how about the bathroom and the stable?" said mother. "In the bathroom we'll burn the lamp," said father.