"
"And you'll lose nothing by the lamp, either! Pare 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 pare 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 pare
that burns, or any other sort of oil, if only I can see to spin.
When, pray, do you think of buying it?"
"I thought of setting off to-morrow--I have some other little
business with the storekeeper as well."
It was now the middle of the week, and mother knew very well that
the other business could very well wait till Saturday, but she did
not say anything now either, but, "the sooner the better," thought
she.
And that same evening father brought in from the storehouse the
big travelling chest in which grandfather, in his time, had stowed
his provisions when he came from Uleaborg, and bade mother fill it
with hay and lay a little cotton-wool in the middle of it.
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