t 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