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
une