NONO'S PLANS, AND PLANS FOR NONO.
Winter had come again. Nono, who was usually of a contented spirit,
seemed continually displeased with the weather. It was now the last of
January. There had for many weeks been a pleasant alternation of
sunshine and storm, of cold and a milder temperature. The snow had
been continually on the ground, but not deep enough to be in any way an
inconvenience; yet Nono was not satisfied. At last the light flakes
had fallen slowly for several days, and then the paths about the
cottage were cut out sharply, as from the solid rock.
Nono's face wore an expression of musing satisfaction. He seemed now
in a mood for play. Thor and Sven were delighted when they heard him
ask their mother's permission to build in his spare time a snow-house
after a plan he had in his mind, and if it might stand in the open
space between the cottage and the gate. Karin was pleased to see Nono
looking so happy, and promptly granted his request.
Nono found no difficulty in getting the other boys to act under his
direction, as they had great confidence in his architectural abilities.
With such willing hands the work went on cheerily, and with wonderful
rapidity. Block after block was put in its place, and the surface most
skilfully smoothed and hardened.
After all, it only looked like a watch-house when it was done, Jan
said, and he was right. There was much playing sentinel among the
children, as they stood on guard, being relieved at stated intervals,
even Decima being allowed to share in the fun. This kind of frolic
came to an end when Nono, with Karin's leave, had smeared the arched
interior with a dismal pasty composition from the refuse of the
coal-cellar at Ekero.
Nono now ventured to ask Karin to lend him a sheet to hang for a few
days before the opening of the watch-house, as the structure was
familiarly called in the family. Sven and Thor gave each other
significant punches as the request was granted, to signify that no
sheet would have been loaned to them; which was no doubt a fact, as
they were not much to be relied on for discretion or care-taking.
Now began the erection of something within the snow-house, which Nono
alone was allowed to touch. The so-called "little boys" were of the
opinion that Nono was making the stump of a crooked old tree; but Oke,
who considered himself an authority in the family as to matters
literary and artistic, declared his opinion that Nono was making a
model of the leaning tower of Pisa, of which he spoke as familiarly as
if he had seen it personally in his travels. To the disappointment of
Decima and her brothers, they were soon all shut out from the scene of
Nono's labours; and he asked them so kindly not even to peep behind the
white curtain, that they gave their promise to do as he wished, and
promises were held sacred at the golden house.
One morning, early in February, Nono had gone out early to "the
watch-house," and had removed the curtain, as the sheet was
respectfully called. The family had finished their breakfast, and were
just breaking up to set off in different directions, when there was a
sound of sleigh-bells stopping at the gate.
The colonel and a gentleman who was staying at Ekero had started out
for a morning drive, "Shall we pass near the post-office?" said the
gentleman, taking a letter from his pocket. "I forgot to say before we
left the house that I had a letter I was anxious to have mailed at
once. It is my wife's name-day, and I want her to get a few words from
me."
"We shall not pass the post-office," said the colonel, "but I can get a
trusty messenger here;" and the coachman drew up at once at the cottage.
The gentleman started, and the colonel sprang to his feet in surprise.
"How wonderful! so like her! I almost thought I had seen a spectre!"
said the stranger. "And her name-day, too. My wife was named after
the princess."
Yes! There stood the princess in white garments, seemingly coming
forward, her figure gracefully bowed, as it was in life, as if by a
loving, unconscious desire of the heart to draw near to all who
approached her. A fleecy shawl seemed to lie lightly over her
shoulders. Snow-white coils of hair crowned her head, and her fair
face had a pure sweetness of its own.
"It is wonderfully like her!" said the stranger.
The family from the cottage now came out, Nono leading Karin, who had
all the while been in the secret, and the rest eagerly following.
"Is this your work, Nono?" said the colonel.
Nono modestly bowed, and murmured an answer, while his eyes glowed as
if they were on fire.
The sound of little Decima sobbing broke in on the conversation. "That
is a cold white princess!" she said. "She can't take me on her knee
and tell me pretty stories. I don't like the cold white princess!"
Jan took Decima in his arms, while the colonel said pleasantly: "But we
like her, Decima; and we loved the princess, both of us; and this
gentleman's wife has her name; and he has written a letter to her that
we want taken to the post-office at once, that she may get it on her
name-day.--Can you go, Nono?"
Nono was glad to spring away with the letter, full of happy
thoughts--that every one knew that it was the princess, his dear snow
princess, that he had made with his own hands! The gentlemen liked it,
too!
While Nono was joyously bounding along the road to the village, the
group round the statue could not get through admiring it.
"He's a wonder, that boy!" said Karin, as she went into the cottage.
"That he should come to me to bring up, when I can't cut out a
gingerbread baby so that it looks like anything!"
"God knows why he sent him to you, Karin," said Pelle, "and God will
know what to do with him in the time that is coming. He is a wonderful
boy, that is sure!"
While the simple people at the golden house were talking in this way
about Nono, the colonel and his guest had driven away. The stranger
had promised to come in the afternoon and take a photograph of the snow
statue, and of Nono too, the very best he could get, and of the whole
family group just as he had seen them.
As the gentlemen drove on together they talked of the princess, beloved
by rich and poor, and of the visitor's wife, one of the pure in heart
worthy to bear the name of her honoured friend.
Nono, too, was the subject of conversation. His whole story was told,
and listened to with intense interest. It was agreed that Nono should,
with Karin's permission, come for some hours every day to Ekero to wait
upon the stranger, who was a sculptor, and was making a marble bust of
the colonel's wife from the various likenesses of her, assisted by her
husband's vivid descriptions of her ever-remembered face and her person
and character.
"I must know that boy, and take him to Italy with me in the spring if I
can," said the sculptor. "There is an artist in him, I am sure, and it
will only be a pleasure to train him."
When, later, Pelle heard the plan that was proposed, he said quickly,--
"Those artist fellows are not always the best to be trusted with the
care of a boy. It would be better for Nono to work in the fields, with
good Jan to look after him, than to make figures in a far country under
the greatest gentleman in the world who was not a good man."
Karin looked relieved, and turned to hear what Jan would say on the
subject; for, after all, in important matters it was always Jan who
decided.
"The colonel said, when he talked to me"--and here Jan paused and
looked about him. He did not object to having it understood that the
colonel considered him the head of the family, a fact which Jan himself
sometimes doubted--"the colonel said," he continued, "that artist was a
Christian man, and he had a wife just fit to be called, as she was,
after the princess, and he couldn't say any more. And he didn't need
to! They haven't any children of their own, so she just goes where he
goes, everywhere, and she's the kind of a woman to be the making of
Nono, such a boy as he is. Nono will go with him in the spring; I have
made up my mind on that matter."
Karin began to cry. "To bring him up, and such a nice boy as he is,
and such a wonderful boy, too; and to love him so, and then have to
give him to people who hardly know him at all!" and Karin fairly sobbed.
"You are partial to Nono, Karin," said Jan sternly. He never held back
a rebuke for Karin when he thought she deserved it. "You never took on
so when your own boys went away, three of them, over the sea."
"_Our_ boys _are our_ boys," said Karin, "and that makes a difference.
They can't belong to anybody else. I should be their own mother, and
they'd feel it, and so should I, if they lived in the moon. But Nono,
off there, he may find his own father and mother and never come back.
They may be tramping kind of people. Most likely they are, and there's
no knowing what ways they might teach him. They have a right to him
and I haven't. That's what I feel. I love him just like my own. He
wouldn't turn the cold shoulder to his own father and mother if they
were poor as poverty or just fit for a prison, I know that. It
wouldn't be in him. Not that I think he would forget me. It would be
a shame to say it, such a good child as he has always been to me!"
Jan put his hand on Karin's shoulder and looked helplessly at her, as
he generally did when she had a flood of tears and a flood of talk at
the same time.
Pelle came to the rescue, as he had often done before. "Karin wants to
be Providence," he said. "She wants to take things into her own hands.
That's the way with women, especially mothers. There was my mother,
when I was a sailor, almost sure I would go to the bad; but God just
lays me up in a hospital, and turns me square round, and sets my face
to the better country. I just went home, and made up my mind to stay
by my mother, and do for her as long as she lived; and I did, God bless
her! It is good sense, Karin, to let the Lord manage his own way.
Your way might not turn out the best after all."
"Yes, I know it," said Karin, wiping her eyes. "But things do come so
unexpected in this world, one can't ever be ready for them."
"Just take one day at a time, Karin, and don't bother about what's
coming," said Pelle. "We can't any of us say what is to become of
Nono, not even Jan, who is so clear in his mind. We don't any of us
know what to-morrow may bring. He'll have just what the Lord has
planned for him. Women are better at bringing up 'critters' than
driving them when they are brought up. They are about the same with
boys. Mothers should bring up their boys right, and then let the Lord
do what he pleases with them afterwards. Isn't it so, Karin?"
"Yes--maybe--I do suppose you are right, Pelle, and I'll try to
remember it. But a man don't know how a woman feels."
"It's well they don't," said Jan curtly. "It wouldn't have suited what
I've had to do in life to be like them. Karin's heart is bigger than
her head; but things have worked well here so far, and it's likely it
will be so to the end," and Jan looked kindly after Karin as she went
off to feed the chickens, with Decima in her train, evidently thinking
her mother was the injured party.
At the bottom of his heart Jan was convinced that he had about the best
wife in the world.