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?"
"Yes--surely we might try it, to see how it will burn."
"It'll burn right enough. Just wait till the evening, and don't
bother."
After dinner, scullery-Pekka brought in a large frozen block of
wood to split up into parea, and cast it from his shoulders on to
the floor with a thud which shook the whole room and set in motion
the oil in the lamp.
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