CHAPTER IV.

NO SECRETS.

The children at the golden house had been regaled with milk and white biscuits in honour of Nono's baptism, and were enjoying the treat in the grove behind the cottage.

Nono lay on Karin's knee, and she was looking fondly at him, while Jan stood silently beside her.

"I am a kind of a mother to him now, a real G.o.d-mother," she said. "I don't mean to tell him that he is not quite my own child. I mean to love him just like the others, and he shall never feel like a stranger here."

"Now you are quite wrong, Karin," said Jan, with a very serious look in his face. "He isn't your own child, and you can't make him so by hiding the truth from him. Tell him from the very first how it was.

He won't love you the less because he was a stranger and you took him in. It would be a poor way to bring him up so that he will 'grow in virtue and the fear of the Lord,' as we promised this morning, to begin by telling him what wasn't true right straight along. What would he think of you when he found out in the end that you had been deceiving him ever since he could remember? And the other children, too; they know all about it. Could you make them promise to pretend, like you, that Nono was their own brother? No good ever comes of going from the truth. That's my notion!"

Jan stood up very straight as he finished, and sitting as Karin was, he seemed to her in every way high above her.

"You are right, Jan," she answered sorrowfully. "I suppose I must do as you say. I did so want him to be really my own, just like my little Gustaf."

"_Your_ little Gustaf, _our_ little Gustaf, is in a good place, and I hope Nono will be there too sometime," said Jan.

"Not Nono in heaven yet!" said Karin, pressing the dark baby to her breast. "I cannot spare him, and I don't believe G.o.d will take him."

"Now you are foolish, Karin. That was not what I meant," said Jan tenderly. "You bring him up right, and he will come sometime where Gustaf is, and that's what we ought to want most for him." Jan paused a moment, and then went on: "Somehow those words of the baptism took hold of me to-day as they never did before, not even when my owny tony children were baptized. I mean to be the right kind of a G.o.dfather to him if I can."

Jan kept his resolution. He could sometimes be rough and hasty with his own boys when he was tired or particularly worried; towards Nono he was always kind, and just, and wise. Somehow there had entered into his honest heart the meaning of the words, "I was a stranger, and ye took me in." What was done for Nono was, in a way, done for the Master.

Karin did not reason much about her feelings for the black-eyed boy who was growing up in the cottage. She gave him a mother's love in full abundance. If little Nono had no sunny Italian skies above him, he had the sunshine of a happy home, and real affection in the golden house.

From the very first Nono heard the truth as to how he came to be living in the cold north. Before he could speak, the story of the bear and the Italians had been again and again told in his presence. Of course, every one who saw the black-eyed, brown-skinned child inquired how he came among the frowzy white heads of his foster-brothers. The picture of the whole scene grew by degrees so perfect in Nono's mind, that he really believed he had been a witness of as well as a prominent partaker in the performance. It was only by severe reproof and reproach on the part of the other children that he was made to understand that he had been only a baby "so long" (the Swedish boys held their hands very near together on such occasions), while they had had the honour of seeing the very whole, and remembered it as perfectly as if it had happened yesterday, as probably some of them did.

So Nono had to take a humble place as a mere listener when the oft-repeated story was told, with every particular carefully preserved among the many eye-witnesses.

"But I love him just as well as if he were my own," was Karin's unfailing close to such conversations, with a caress for the little Italian that sealed the truth of her a.s.sertion.

Nono loved his foster-mother with the grateful affection of his warm southern nature. Yet the very name Italy had for him a magical charm, and the sound of a hand-organ, or the sight of a dark-faced man with a broad-brimmed hat, made him thrill with a half joy that his own kith and kin were coming, and a half fear that he was to be taken away from the pleasant cottage and all the love that surrounded him. Bears had a perfect fascination for him, but all the specimens he saw were rough and ragged. No bear, the family were all sure, had ever had such a beautiful brown coat of fur as that Pionono that Sven had been so anxious to kiss.

Nono's favourite text in the Bible was the one that expressed the youthful David's reliance on G.o.d when he went out to meet the insolent Goliath: "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from this Philistine."

The Philistine stood for any and all threatening dangers of soul and body, and this pa.s.sage cheered the little Italian through many a childish trouble, and many an encounter with the big boys from the village, who delighted to a.s.sail him in solitary places, and reproach him with being an outlandish stranger, living on charity, and not as much of a Swede as the ugly bear he was named after.

All the warmer seemed to Nono the sheltering affection of Karin, contrasted with these frequent attacks from without. His grat.i.tude expressed itself in an enthusiastic devotion to Karin, and a delight in doing her the slightest service.

"Nono sets a good example to the other boys," said Jan one day. "I don't know, Karin, what he wouldn't be glad to do for you. Our own little rascals get all they can out of 'mother,' and hardly take the trouble to say 'Thank you.' As for thinking to help you, that always falls on Nono."

"Our boys are much towards me as we are to our heavenly Father, I think. We seem to take it for granted he will give us what We need, and that's all there is of it. At least that's the way I am, Jan."

Karin liked to make an excuse for her children when she thought Jan was a little hard upon them.

"I won't forget that, Karin, when I'm put out, as I am sometimes with the boys," answered Jan. "They are not a bad set, anyhow, to be so many. I know I am not half as thankful as I ought to be: not in bed a day since I can remember."

CHAPTER V.

AN ARTIST.

Time slipped away rapidly at the golden house. There had been many pleasant family scenes, both within and around the cottage, since Nono had been so tenderly welcomed there, eight years before.

It was a bright July morning. The bit of a rye-field on the other side of the road stood in the summer sunshine in tempting perfection. The harvesting had begun, in a slow though it might be a sure manner. A tall, spare old man, his hat laid aside, and his few scattered gray locks fluttering in the gentle breeze, was the only reaper. His shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbows showed his meagre, bony arms. His thin neck and breast were bare, as he suffered from heat from his unwonted labour. The scythe moved slowly, and the old man stopped often to draw a long breath. Near him stood a fair-haired, st.u.r.dy little girl, who held up her ap.r.o.n full of corn flowers, as blue as the eyes that looked so approvingly upon them. They were in the midst of a chat in a moment of rest, when a figure, strange and interesting to them both, came along the road with a light, free step.

The new-comer was a tall young girl, with a white parasol in her hand, though her wide-brimmed hat seemed enough to keep her fair face from being browned by the glad sunshine. She stopped suddenly when she came in front of the cottage, and fixed her eyes on the old man and the child with an expression of astonished delight. "Charming! beautiful!

I must paint them," she said to herself.

The stranger put down the camp-stool she had on her arm, and screwed into its back her parasol with the long handle. She sat down at once and opened her box, where paper and pallet and all manner of conveniences for amateur painters were admirably arranged. "Please, please stand still," she said; "just as you are. I want to paint you."

"I have to stop often to rest; but I must work while I can. I don't want to be idle if I am old. I can't do a real day's work; but I can get something done if I am industrious," said the gray-haired labourer hesitatingly.

The child seemed to notice something sorrowful in the tone of her companion's voice, and she came quickly to his aid, saying,--

"Uncle Pelle is the best man in the world. Mother says he'll never teach us anything that isn't just right. He does a good bit of work, father says, and he knows."

The little girl was evidently accustomed to be listened to, and did not stand in awe of this stranger or any other.

"I shall pay you both if you hold still awhile and let me take your picture; and that will be just as well for Uncle Pelle as cutting grain, and lighter work, too. You can talk if you want to, but you must not stir while I am making a real likeness of you."

"As the young lady pleases," said the old man, with a look of resignation. "I want to be useful."

"Is that your uncle, child?" asked the young artist. "I thought, of course, it was your grandfather." Then looking towards the old man she added, "Do you live here?" and she nodded towards the golden house.

"I don't live anywhere," said the old man sorrowfully. "The poorhouse in Aneholm parish and the poorhouse in Tomtebacke, some way from here, can't agree which should keep me, and now they are lawing about it.

I've had a fever, and I seem to be broke down. I don't belong anywhere just now, but Karin there in the house says I'm a kind of relation of hers, though it puzzles me to see how. She wants me to stay with them till all is settled; and Jan, who mostly lets her have her way, tells me he hasn't anything against it. So you see I like to do a turn of work if I can, if it's only to show I'm thankful. Karin says she's used to a big family, and it seems lonesome since her oldest son went to America, and I must take his place. I don't live in the cottage.

There are enough of 'em there without me. They've fixed me up a place alongside of Star--that's the cow."

"It's a dear little room," said the child, "and we all like to be there; but Uncle Pelle shuts the door sometimes, and won't let us in."

"Old folks must have their quiet spells," said the old man apologetically.

"It isn't just to be quiet, you know, Uncle Pelle. Mother says Uncle Pelle reads good books when he is alone, and makes good prayers, too; and he's a blessing to the family," said the little girl, who seemed to consider herself the friend and patron of her companion.

"She's a bit spoiled. The only girl, you see. There were six boys before, not counting Nono or the two boys that died."

"Nono!" exclaimed the stranger. "That was the name of the little brown baby I saw baptized in Aneholm church, eight years ago, when I was at home before, just for a few days."

"It is a queer name," said Uncle Pelle. "The pastor said it meant the ninth, as the Italians talk; and so when this little girl came, he said Karin and Jan might as well call her Decima, which was like the tenth, in Swedish. And they did. They about make a fool of her in the family; and I ain't much better. That's Nono behind you."

A slight dark boy had been standing quietly watching the young stranger while she skilfully handled her brushes. He now stepped forward, took off the little straw hat of his own braiding, and bowed, without any sheepish confusion.

"Here's Nono!" said Decima, placing herself beside him, as if she had a special right to exhibit him to the stranger.

"And so you are Nono," said Alma. "I have always felt as if you belonged in a way to me. Where did the people who live here find you?"