THE LITTLE COTTAGE.
Of course, Alma was anxious to see the wonderful group that Nono had
made for Karin. The evening after the celebration of Karin's name-day,
Alma appeared at the cottage in a light summer costume and her parasol
held daintily in her hand, though the sun was veiled in golden clouds.
What was her astonishment to see Frans cosily sitting on the doorstep
beside Jan in his working dress, and his own not more presentable for
eyes polite. Frans enjoyed society where the laws of etiquette and the
dominion of fashion were unknown.
"You here, Frans!" exclaimed Alma, with a sudden cloud on her before
smiling face.
"You here, Alma!" answered Frans, starting up with affected surprise,
then offering to his sister with formal courtesy the seat he had
vacated at honest Jan's side.
Jan took himself up too--a slow process for him after a day of hard
work. Bareheaded he stepped forward to welcome the young lady, who at
once explained the object of her visit. Nono, who had seen her in the
distance, now came to meet her, and willingly led the way to the shore.
Karin, who was weeding in the vegetable-garden, did not know of the
arrival of the guest.
Alma's delight with the group exceeded Nono's expectations. She used
words about it such as she had heard her father employ in criticising
works of art, and quite soared beyond Nono's comprehension as well as
her own. The little house, just like Karin's cottage, charmed her
completely. "Did you really make it all yourself, Nono; the house, I
mean?" she said.
"Uncle Pelle helped me about it a little," said Nono honestly. "I am
glad you like it."
"I like it so much that I want just such a one, to be really my own,
but very, very much smaller it should be. I should like to use it as a
money-box, a kind of savings-bank. The chimney should be open all the
way down, so that I could drop the money in. The door should be
locked, and I should have the key. I have a lock from an old work-box
that would just do. Pelle could help you to fit it in, I am sure; he
is so handy about everything. Will you do it, Nono?"
Of course Nono gladly said he would try; and then Alma added, "But I
want to see Pelle too, and Karin, and Pelle's room, and the cottage."
"Pelle does not often let anybody come into his room but me," said Nono
hesitatingly; "but Mamma Karin will be pleased, ever so pleased, to see
you, I am sure."
"Perhaps I had better come another time," said Alma, remembering that
Frans was on the premises, and not being at all sure what he might
choose to say while she was trying to make herself agreeable at the
golden house. So Alma made her way to the gate, escorted by Nono, and
only left a message for the family, who had all assembled in the
garden, which Frans was cheerily inspecting.
Nono began at once to plan about the savings-bank for Alma, and was
much in deep consultation with Pelle. In the course of their
conversations on the subject, Nono heard from the old man how the
golden house came to be so very different from the usual red cottages
of Sweden. He felt it was like Karin not to have told him the story.
She had served as maid in her youth to an eccentric old lady, with whom
she had lived until she was married. When her former mistress was near
her end, and was gloomily looking forward to death, some words of
simple faith and hope she had once heard from Karin came now to her
mind like a new revelation, and the glad truths took deep root in her
troubled heart. An abounding gratitude to Karin at once took
possession of the dying woman, and she added an item to her will
providing that Karin, who was struggling along with her young family
about her, should have a bit of land of her own, and a cottage built
upon it, like those the testator remembered in the part of Sweden where
she had lived in her childhood. It should all be one great room up to
the roof, but very comfortable and convenient. It must not, though, be
red like any other cottage, but yellow at first, and always yellow; for
Karin had been as good as gold to her mistress, and better. So this
was the story of "the golden house," as the Italian had named it--a
name it had borne ever since.
Bright yellow, and complete in all its appointments, was the little
house that Nono at last took to Alma. If not gold itself, something
golden, small and round, fell into Nono's hands as Alma received it.
"Now, Nono," she said, "that is your gift from your godmother, for I am
a kind of a godmother to you. It may be the last present you will have
from me. I am going to be very saving now, and lay up all the money I
can."
Nono felt as if common Swedish words were hardly fit to express his
thankfulness, so he astonished Alma by dropping on one knee and kissing
her hand, as he had seen "a courtier saluting a queen" in a "history
book" he studied at school.
Old Pelle, meanwhile, was looking on with the sharp twinkle in his eye
with which he watched many of Alma's proceedings. She knew he had been
consulting-architect as to the little cottage, but she could not help
calling on him now to admire it, saying, "Is it not a beauty, and just
like Karin's home?"
Pelle leaned on his rake as he stood, and answered, "It is like it, and
it is not like it. People's faces can look like them even when they
are dead. That is a kind of a dead house to me with the door tight
shut. That isn't the way at the cottage. The door is always open, in
a way, there. It says, 'Come in; you're welcome.' If the Master up
there," and he raised his thin finger towards the skies, "was to say to
Karin, 'Where is the guest-room?' she'd likely point to the house, all
one great room inside. She'd make a mistake, though. Her guest-room
is in _here_, where she let the Master in long ago." Pelle laid his
hand on his breast, where he supposed his honest old heart to be
beating. He may not have located it right physiologically, but
something whispered to Alma that the old man spoke the truth as he
added emphatically, "The guest-room is the heart, to my thinking; and
when the right Guest gets in there, sharing is easy, and a man or a
woman grows free and friendly like."
Pelle began to work very diligently, raking the newly-cut grass as if
he had had his say in the matter and had no more time for talking.
Alma went into the house with the savings-bank in her hand. A
savings-bank it proved to be as the months went on, with a very strong
draught down the little chimney. Alma had been in earnest when she had
said she meant to be economical. Her firm will was now set in that
direction. Coin after coin was dropped into the chimney, as swallow
after swallow sinks into similar quarters when a summer night comes on.
The accumulating store lay in secrecy and in stillness, save when Alma
now and then made the little house shake as if an earthquake threatened
it with destruction, while she listened delightedly to the jingling and
rattling within. She wished often that she had asked Nono to make real
windows with glass in them, through which she might have feasted on her
treasure. She did not like those little black pasteboards based with
white, and the pots of flowers painted behind them to simulate Karin's
geraniums.
Every Saturday evening Pelle came to be paid for his labours of the
week. His gains were duly handed over to Karin, and then Pelle went to
his little room, where he walked up and down, holding his head as high
as the ceiling would permit, in the comfortable consciousness that he
had turned his back on the poorhouse, and yet was not a burden at the
cottage.
The colonel had provided the money for Pelle from the first, and now
Alma had asked him to do the same for Nono, as she had something
particular in view for which she was saving all she could spare. The
colonel looked inquiringly, but received no answer to his questioning
glance. He was accustomed to Alma's having her plans and her whims and
fancies; and as they generally did no harm, he was not in the habit of
examining particularly into them. It would even be a pleasure to him
to pay Nono's wages personally. He liked the little brown boy who made
him think of the sunny south, and could not pass him in the garden
without giving him a pleasant word or a friendly nod. It pleased him
to think there would now be a new link between them. A silver link it
proved in a small way to Nono, who had no reason to complain of the
change. The little Italian did, however, half realize that Miss Alma
did not notice him quite in the same way as at first; but he was
thankful for the friendliness of the past, for his pleasant home, and
for steady work, and life was very bright to him now that the twins
were more his protectors than his tyrants.
Frans was not at all pleased with the new system of economy. Alma had
always been ready to give or to lend to him from her own private purse
when he was "short of money," for the construction of his machines or
for any of his various undertakings. She had often scolded him for
being thriftless and reckless, but had been as liberal with her loans
and gifts as with her reproaches. He was fairly astonished when his
birthday came round to receive from her an old book of her own, with
the fly-leaf torn out, and an inscription written on the title-page,
"Frans. From his devoted sister."
"Much devoted!" he said with a shrug, as he looked at his present, a
nicely-bound book, truly, and containing much good advice, but conveyed
in such long words and long sentences and such very small print that
Alma herself had never been able to read it. "What's got into you,
Alma?" he added hastily; "you seem to be drawing off from me, every
way, as fast as you can. I wonder if you will stop calling me Frans
one of these days, and pretend you are no sister of mine. You know I
don't care for this thing! I'm not much of a reader, any way, and
books are not much in my line, unless they are about travels or
machines or something that grows or crawls. You are all the sister I
have, and I wish sometimes you would find it out!"
Frans did not wait for an answer, but ran off to thank the housekeeper
for the big cake she had made for him, and the flower-decked table on
which it had been placed. He wanted to thank his father, too, for the
neat little cupboard that had been placed in his room for his cabinet,
with lock and key, glass doors, and plenty of shelves, just as he would
have wished it.
The colonel was not well, and had not yet appeared. Perhaps he wanted
to see his boy first, alone, on his birthday.
Frans looked quite tender and softened when the interview was over. He
was convinced that his father, at least, did love him very dearly, in
spite of the trouble he was always giving. "Suppose--suppose," he
thought to himself--"suppose I should turn over a new leaf, and really
try to be better!"
He passed out into the garden and chanced to look up at Alma's window.
She stood there with the yellow cottage in her hand, and was dropping
something down the chimney. "There goes my present, I daresay," he
thought, and again the bitter mood was uppermost, in spite of his
father's kind words and the charming new home for his cabinet.