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 god-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 God 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 godfather 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 assertion.
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 God 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 passage cheered the little Italian through many a
childish trouble, and many an encounter with the big boys from the
village, who delighted to assail 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 gratitude
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."