"Steady!" cries father; "what are you making that row for?"
"I brought in this pare-block to melt it a bit--nothing else will
do it--it is regularly frozen."
"You may save yourself the trouble then," said father, and he
winked at us.
"Well, but you can't get a blaze out of it at all, otherwise."
"You may save yourself the trouble, I say."
"Are no more parea to be split up, then?"
"Well, suppose I DID say that no more parea were to be split up?"
"Oh! 't is all the same to me if master can get on without 'em."
"Don't you see, Pekka, what is hanging down from the rafters
there?" When father put this question he looked proudly up at the
lamp, and then he looked pityingly down upon Pekka.
Pekka put his clod in the corner, and then, but not till then,
looked up at the lamp.
"It's a lamp," says father, "and when it burns you don't want any
more pare light."
"Oh!" said Pekka, and, without a single word more, he went off to
his chopping-block behind the stable, and all day long, just as on
other days, he chopped a branch of his own height into little
fagots; but all the rest of us were scarce able to get on with
anything. Mother made believe to spin, but her supply of flax had
not diminished by one-half when she shoved aside the spindle and
went out. Father chipped away at first at the handle of his axe,
but the work must have been a little against the grain, for he
left it half done. After mother went away, father went out also,
but whether he went to town or not I don't know.
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