Nono

“ 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." ”

“ The statue of the princess had long since passed away, and the thoughts of the pleasant scenes around it had melted into the cheerful memories of the past. In the cottage there were ever the photographs of the beautiful white figure and of the family group, and under them an almost perfect likeness of Nono.
The real Nono was far away in the land of his forefathers. He was sorely missed in the home where he had been so tenderly cared for. Blackie was, as usual, wearing deep mourning, though he showed no emotional signs of feeling the absence of his master. ”

“ Karin cried like a child when she heard that Nono's poor father had appeared; the very man she had dreaded to think of, who might come at any time to carry off the boy who was as dear to her as her own children. How she wished she could speak the poor father's language, and tell him what Nono had been to her! Later, she did try to make him understand it all, not only by broken Swedish words and signs, but with Frans sometimes as a translator. Mr. Frans had been studying Italian with his father, and was glad himself to talk about Nono. ”

“ The comparison to the bear was not meant to be personally offensive towards Nono, though he always felt that with Bruin he was specially connected. He had indeed, in his caretaking, not left marks like a human being as he had tiptoed along, leaving round traces on the shining floor and stairs, as if a four-footed creature had passed.
Nono was not much accustomed to harsh words, and the reproaches of the faithful housekeeper increased his awe of the place, where he felt himself a decided intruder, though following the young mistress at her express command. ”

“ But Miss Stone was not like that. You could hug Nono and tell her secrets and what you wanted for luncheon. Sometimes she would let you have it—if you were good—very good—and Nono knew everything. She knew so much that Betty Harris, looking from her window, sighed softly. No one could know as much as Nono knew—not ever.
“All ready, Betty.” It was Miss Stone in the doorway again. And with a last look down out of the window at the horses and the shimmering lake, the child came across the room, skipping a little. “I should like to wear my hat with the cherries, please,” she said. ”

“ Nono really feared this duumvirate, for the twins had more than once given him to understand that he would "catch it" when they got to be the oldest at home. They had no particular offences to complain of or anticipate on Nono's side, but they enjoyed giving out awful threats of what they would do if ever they had the opportunity. Oke had kept them in order without difficulty, for he had a vehement power of reproof, when fairly roused, that could make even the twins hide their faces in shame, as he pictured to them their unworthiness. ”

“ Nono was the recipient of the secrets of all the children. They always found in the little Italian a sympathetic listener, and they could be sure of his profound silence as to their private communications. Nono's evident sense of the many for whom Karin was called on to care had suggested to Erik that although it would be too great a penance for him to be tending a baby, as Nono did, he could go out and earn his own living ”

“ All nature was bright, but Nono had too solemn a sense of the greatness and the extraordinary nature of his undertaking to be in anything but a serious mood.
He was in the outskirts of Stockholm, when some big apprentice boys who were on their way to their work hailed him as he was in the midst of a contention with Blackie, who seemed convinced that, with all his accomplishments, he was not fit for city life, and it was best for him to stay in the rural districts. The apprentices offered to help Nono, which they did substantially, if subduing Blackie were the matter in question. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But we are amused when we find grave strong men in the same predicament of ill conjectures. We smile as we remember a certain dedication "To Pio Nono," which by its simple grandeur and magnificent beauty will live splendide mendax to excuse its prophetic inaccuracy. It is not wise to foretell events to happen whilst we live. ”

“ Nono had gotten on very well with the "lions and the bears" of the past, but how was he to deal with this two-headed "Philistine" under whose dominion he had now come? He was resolved on one thing—Karin should hear no complaints from him. She should not be worried by the little boy she had taken in among her own to be so wonderfully happy.
CHAPTER VII. A YOUNG TEACHER.
Nono and Uncle Pelle had been working a whole morning in the garden at Ekero under Alma's direction. She was going to have a parterre of her own, according to a plan she had been secretly maturing. ”

“ Altogether emphatically Barton pushed back his chair. "Well, I call it a shame!" he said. "For a nice live little girl like you to be packed off like so much baggage—to marry some great gray-bearded clout who hasn't got an idea in his head except—except—" squintingly he stared down at the scattered sheets on the floor—"except—'Amphichelydia,'" he asserted with some feeling.
"Yes—isn't it?" sighed little Eve Edgarton.
"For Heaven's sake!" said Barton. "Where is Nunko-Nono?"
"Nunko-Nono?" whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Where is it? Why, it's an island! In an ocean, you know! ”

“ There were six boys before, not counting Nono or the two boys that died."
"Nono!" exclaimed the stranger. "That was the name of the little brown baby I saw baptized in Aneholm church, eight years ago, when I was at home before, just for a few days."
"It is a queer name," said Uncle Pelle. "The pastor said it meant the ninth, as the Italians talk; and so when this little girl came, he said Karin and Jan might as well call her Decima, which was like the tenth, in Swedish. And they did. They about make a fool of her in the family; and I ain't much better. That's Nono behind you." ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh, Eve—Eve," he pleaded sharply, "you'll be so much better off—out of the world! You've got infinitely too much money and infinitely too little—self-conceit—to be happy here! They would break your heart in a year! But at Nunko-Nono!" he cried eagerly. "Oh, Eve! Think of the peace of it! Just white beach, and a blue sea, and the long, low, endless horizon. And John will make you a garden! And women—I have often heard—are very happy in a garden! And—"
Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes again to his. ”

“ It isn't exactly, you know, like a bride moving fifty miles out from town somewhere," she explained painstakingly. "When a bride goes out to a place like Nunko-Nono, it isn't enough, you understand, that she takes just the things she needs. What she's got to take, you see, is everything under the sun—that she ever may need!"
With a little soft sigh of finality she sank back into her pillows, and then struggled up for one brief instant again to add a postscript, as it were, to her ultimatum. ”

“ The discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly escaped the epidemic "falling sickness" of enthusiasm for Pio Nono, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects. If the discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him understand that to the writer it has been more so. But such discrepancy we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature . ”

“ 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?" ”

“ After we had sat a little while in the kiosk we were joined by the chief Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Baron de Giers of Burmah, a jovial, corpulent, elderly gentleman who had the most wonderful likeness to the late Pio Nono, and who clasped his brown hands over his fat paunch and kicked about his plump bare brown feet in high enjoyment when anything that struck him as humorous was uttered. He wholly differed in appearance from his superior, who was a lean-faced and lean-figured man, grave, and indeed somewhat sad both of eye and of visage when his face was in repose. ”

“ Decima laid her little hand in Nono's, and was about leading him off the scene, when she was suddenly captured by her mother and hurried into the cottage, with the exclamation, "Here's Decima up till this time! One never knows when to put children to bed these summer evenings. She'll be as cross as pepper in the morning if she don't get her sleep out!"
It was plain that Karin was not quite satisfied with the turn the whole affair had taken.
"Papa is too partial to Nono! It is a shame!" murmured the twins, as they went off in a pout. ”

“ I hold that man surpasses all the rest
Of Romans, heroes, patriots,—and that when
He sat down on the throne, he dispossessed
The first graves of some glory. See again,
This country-saving is a glorious thing!
Why, say a common man achieved it? Well!
Say, a rich man did? Excellent! A king?
That grows sublime! A priest? Improbable!
A Pope? Ah, there we stop and cannot bring
Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell
So heavy round the neck of it—albeit
We fain would grant the possibility
For thy sake, Pio Nono! ”

“ It was what her breakfast had cost her. Apparently, by his reception, it was all right.
“Tomorrow?” she asked in French, and pointed toward the chair again.
“Oui, oui, Demain,” agreed Nono. Then he must know that artists sometimes wanted one to pose again.
That was on Sunday. Saturday had not been strikingly successful. For some reason, perhaps because it was Saturday, everything, banks and the Express Company, Mr. Culbert’s office and most of the museums Cynthia wished to visit, had been closed. Monday, of course, they would be open again, and she could get in touch with Mr. Culbert. ”

“ That evil's harvest-field shall be this strand.
I, too, have sinned, have wronged my fellow-men,
Have raged against my kindred and myself.
But though All-gracious Heaven may deem my throes
And gloomy bondage full atonement's price
For what my waywardness has brought about,
I must do more; my honor and my fame
I must restore before my countrymen.
And in sublimity of earthly record
Become a fit companion to the souls
Of my beloved ones 'mid celestial spheres. ”

“ The swollen waves defy their strength to cross.
So go to work; then I shall follow you.
Deaf Smith.
Thou, a deserter, unknown and despised,
Commandest here, as if thou wert our master;
And yet I know not what it is that prompts me
Implicitly thy order to obey.
If I believed in visions, I should ween
Thou wert an angel sent from heavenly realms,
Disguised in beggar's dress, to aid our cause
By thine advice; so beams thy eye inspired.
And so assuring sounds to me thy voice.
So, friends, make haste to hurl these planks and beams
Into the waves ”

“ I hold marriage indissoluble by human enactment, and while Nona lives I regard her as my wife, no matter what she has become, no matter into what shameful career she may have been driven by my cowardly course of action. When she believed I had abandoned her, the poor girl doubtless grew desperate. What I have told you is known only to my confessor, to the Superior of our Order in England, where I took my vows, and to my father, to whom I promptly confided everything when I joined him in Germany just before his death. ”