"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 didn't want parea any more.

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

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

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

But Pekka said never a word more. A little while after that he
began to patch up his boots, stretched on tiptoe to reach down a
pare from the rafters, lit it, stuck it in a slit fagot, and sat