QUESTIONINGS.
Another spring had come to the golden house. Such a little family as
Karin now had! She quite mourned over it. The twins had gone to
America; Erik had written for them. He had now a good place on a farm,
where there was work for two such "hands" as he was sure Adam and Enos
must be, raised in such a home. The twins had been good teachers of
the Swedish language in their way, the best way, by example; and Erik
was soon able to write a letter again that could be understood at the
golden house without a translator. He wrote that the twins were the
admiration of the country round, and his pride too. So Karin was
thankful; but she missed the big, boisterous fellows, and said she felt
like an old table trying to stand on three legs, with only Thor and
Sven and Nono at home.
Pelle and Nono still had many cozy talks together, for which the boy
was much wiser and the old man much happier. But the time came when
the little Italian had a real sorrow.
Up in Stockholm the solemn bells were ringing, and mourning garments
and mourning hats were everywhere. In stately mansions and in dreary
attics real tears of sorrow were shed. The good princess was dead. In
the palace, in a grand apartment all draped in black, lay her silent,
wasted body, on a pompous funeral bier. Throngs of the loftiest and
the noblest of the land passed slowly by, in solemn procession, to pay
their last respects to the humble princess and the true-hearted woman
who had gone to her reward. Rough peasants and the poor of the city
came too, with their tribute of real mourning, grateful to see once
more the face of the loving friend who had cast sunlight into their
shadowed lives.
Far away in the country little Nono's heart was sorrowful. _His_
princess was dead! No one had been able to really comfort him.
Suddenly he seemed to see her bright and glad in the Holy City. She
was at home at last! She was where she belonged--where "the inhabitant
shall no more say, I am sick;" where "the wicked cease from troubling,
and the weary be at rest." Nono had now his princess in heaven, and he
went about his work with something of the light in his face which he
had seemed to see in hers.
From the hospital there came the news that little Decima was drooping
and sad. She said she must cry because the princess would never take
her on her knee again and call her "Decima Desideria." The child
declared she was well now, and she wanted to go home. Indeed she was
as well as she could ever be, the doctors said, but she would be a
cripple for life. She must always walk with a crutch. A change would
do the child good, was the universal opinion; so home came the little
girl, to her mother's great delight.
"Such a dear little useful creature as she had learned to be," Karin
said, and it was true. As to knitting and crochet-work, no one in that
parish could match her. The little lame girl really brought sunshine
back to the golden house. She had such sweet songs to sing, and such
hymns for Sunday, that Jan said it was quite like going to church to
hear her, or more like hearing the little angels doing their best up in
heaven. To Pelle she particularly attached herself, laughing merrily,
as she said they belonged together, as they both walked with a stick.
Decima was soon the soul of merriment. She seemed to have been
provided with an extra stock of gladness, to bubble over, in spite of
her misfortune, to be a joy to herself and all about her. Her
resources for talk were inexhaustible. She had always stories to tell
of her stay at the hospital, something that had happened to herself or
the other little patients, whose biographies she had quite by heart.
Of the princess Decima never wearied of talking--how she played with
the children, even let them cover her with hay, then rose up suddenly
out of the silent heap, and smiled at them so friendly, just like an
angel, they all thought. What sweet words she wrote to them, too,
about the good Shepherd that would willingly lead them to the green
pastures!
"Yes, little Decima is lame for life, but it has been her greatest
blessing," said Pelle to Karin. Karin opened her eyes wide, and he
went on: "We all spoiled Decima. The boys petted and teased her, and
even you, Karin, seemed to think the world must be made all smooth for
her. The princess has taught her the way to heaven, and has gone
before, so the child understands what a real place heaven is. We
mustn't spoil her again."
The caution was needed. When Decima was pleased to speak, all
listened. Something was said one day in her presence about a monkey.
She began to laugh cheerily, and told about a baby monkey that a
hand-organ man brought once to the hospital in his pocket. She had
seen him from the window. It was a queer man, they all thought, for he
said he was looking for a golden house, where he left a baby long ago.
Maybe it was Nono he meant. He only stayed a little while, and then
went away, and never came back again.
[Illustration: "She had seen the hand-organ man from the window."]
Nono's eyes gleamed as he listened, and his mouth trembled so he could
not speak. "It must have been my father!" he exclaimed at last, and
his tears fell fast.
So thought all the family, and the news was soon spread abroad that
Nono's father was in Sweden, and was looking for him. Decima had to
tell the story over and over again to listeners in the house and
listeners without. The colonel and the pastor set on foot an inquiry
for the man who had appeared months ago at the hospital, but with no
apparent result. The interest in the search gradually died away, and
it was the general conclusion that the man had returned discouraged to
his native land.
As for Nono, he was quite changed. He did not give up the hope of
finding his own father. He seemed always listening, looking out for,
expecting something. Yet he did his work faithfully, and was more than
ever thoughtful of Karin, and dutiful and obedient towards Jan. There
was a special tenderness towards the dear friends in the cottage, as if
the time of parting might be near. The likeness of the princess seemed
meanwhile to have become especially dear to him. He would stand and
look at it long and wistfully, as if he would ask his friend some deep
question, or read in her inmost soul.
Pelle watched the boy narrowly, and grew uneasy about him. Nono was
not inclined to talk about his father, and Pelle would not force his
confidence. He was afraid some wild scheme was forming in the mind of
the boy, some plan of going off in search of his father. Pelle took
occasion at one time to speak of the sorrow Frans had caused in his
home by his disappearance; at another, he enlarged on the dangers that
beset young lads without the protecting care of those who understood
life better than they did, etc., with innumerable variations.
Nono listened in respectful silence, but with a wandering, wistful look
in his eyes.
Alma had been intensely interested in Decima's story. Nono's life was
quite like a romance, she said, and she wished she could turn to the
last page of the story, as she often did in a book she was reading.
She, too, was watching and waiting and expecting. The sound of a
hand-organ brought her at once to the window, and many a wandering
musician was astonished with questions in Swedish and Italian as to
whether he was looking for the golden house, where he had left a baby
long ago; what had become of Pionono, the bear; if Francesca were dead,
etc. Such questions, put so suddenly and skilfully, Alma fancied would
be sure to bring out the truth. The puzzled stragglers often went away
from Ekero half suspecting that they were losing their own wits or the
young lady had quite lost hers, or that Swedish and Italian were now so
confused in their brains that they could fully understand neither.
When such wanderers happened to meet Nono on the highroad, they were
likely to be further mystified by the dark boy's saying suddenly,
"Don't I look like an Italian?" or "I am the baby that was left at the
golden house," or some other equally surprising question or
announcement.
If Nono chanced to have neglected to speak to such a stranger, he was
haunted by the thought that perhaps that very man was his father, and
he might have lost his only opportunity of succeeding in his search.
"I shall be glad when winter comes, and these black-haired fellows stop
tramping the country round," said Karin one day. "I am tired of the
sight of them, and thinking when I see them perhaps they are coming to
carry off Nono. What should I do without him? Why, he's just like one
of my own boys."
Karin was talking to Pelle. She always allowed herself the liberty of
saying out first what was in her heart to him. Now he answered her at
once. "You seem to think that Nono was made just to be a pleasure to
you, like a baby's plaything. A pleasure he has been to you and to us
all, and that I don't deny. God knows what he means to do with the
boy, and we don't. It's likely he'll have to go out like the others to
earn his living. He can't weed and run errands for Miss Alma all his
life. You must think that he is getting to be a big boy, if we do call
him 'little Nono.' The Lord will take care of him, I am sure of that,"
and Pelle turned away from Karin and went into his little room.
Karin dashed away the tears that had come into her eyes at the very
thought of parting with Nono, but she thought to herself, "Pelle is
right. Nono is getting to be a big boy, and more's the pity. How glad
I am that I have Decima for company! and so cheerful and helpful the
child is. I don't know how I got on without her so long. If I had had
my way and kept her at home, she would have been a wild, spoiled little
thing, to be sure. The Lord's ways are best, as Pelle says. That's
what I am, a poor scholar at learning. A mother, though, must be a
mother, and that the Lord knows as well as I do, and that's a comfort."