KARIN'S FLOCK.
There was a family group in the big room at the golden house. The
mother sat in the centre, with the brown baby on her knee. The heads
of the six fair-haired children were bent down over the new treasure
like a cluster of rough-hewn angels in the Bethlehem scene, as carved
out by some reverent artist of old. With a puzzled, half-pleased
glance the stalwart father looked down upon them all, like a benignant
giant.
"Is he really our own little baby now?" said one of the children.
"What shall we call him?" asked another.
"We'll name him, of course, after the bear," said the oldest boy, who
liked to take the lead in the family. "I heard the man call him
Pionono, and he said the bear knew his name."
"We won't call him after that horrid bear!" exclaimed Karin.
"Uncle Björn is as nice as anybody, and his name is just 'bear,'" urged
one of the boys.
"Don't contrary your mother," said Jan decidedly. "Pionono is too long
a name. We'll call him Nono, and that's a nice name, to my thinking."
"A nice, pretty little name," said the mother, "and I like it."
And so the matter was settled. The little brown baby was to be called
after a pope and bear, in Protestant Sweden. Nono (the ninth) suited
him better than any one around him suspected. The tiny Italian was
really the ninth baby that had come to the golden house. Karin had now
six children. She had laid her firstborn in the grave long ago, and
lately her little Gustaf had been placed beside him in the churchyard.
Classification simplified matters in Karin's family, as elsewhere. The
children were divided by common consent into three pairs, known as the
boys, the twins, and the little boys. For each division the laws and
privileges were fixed and unalterable. "The boys," Erik and Oke, were
the oldest pair. Erik was at present a smaller edition of his father,
with a fair promise of a full development in the same direction. Now,
at twelve years of age, he was almost as tall as his mother, and could
have mastered her at any time in a fair fight. Oke, a year younger,
was pale, and slight, and stooping, with a thin, straight nose, quite
out of keeping with the large, strongly-marked features of the rest of
the children. As for "the twins," it was difficult to think of them as
two boys. They were so much alike that their mother could hardly tell
them apart. Indeed, she had a vague idea that she might have changed
them without knowing it many times since they were baptized. How could
she be sure that the one she called Adam was not Enos, and Enos the
true Adam? Of two things she was certain--that she loved them both as
well as a mother ever loved a pair of twins, and that they were worthy
of anybody's unlimited affection. She was proud of them, too. Were
they not known the country round as Jan Persson's splendid twins, and
the fattest boys in the parish? As for "the little boys," they were
much like the Irishman's "little pig who jumped about so among the
others he never could count him." "The little boys" were always to be
found in unexpected and exceptionable places, to the great risk of life
and limb, and the great astonishment of the beholders. To try to ride
on a strange bull-dog or kiss a bear was quite a natural exploit for
them, for they feared neither man nor beast.
As for Karin, she was not a worrying woman, and took the care of her
many children cheerily. She could but do her best, and leave the rest
to God and the holy angels. Those precious protectors had lately
seemed very near to her, since baby Gustaf had gone to live among them.
That all would go right with Nono she did not doubt. When she laid him
down for the night, she clasped his tiny brown hands, and prayed not
only for him, but for his poor mother, wherever she might be, and left
her to the care of the merciful Friend who could give to wild lunatics
full soundness of mind.