er people, and
he must have meant us too. We are Christians, of course, are we not?"

He turned his large sorrowful eyes towards her, and was silent. _She_
might be a Christian. The Saviour had said that children were of the
kingdom of heaven. But she was no longer a very little child, but
uncommonly womanly for her age. He suddenly remembered some
unchristian peculiarities that were certainly growing upon her. She
must be looked after, and placed where she would be under the right
kind of influence. Her small hand was now laid caressingly on his
knee, and he placed his own over it.

Alma was not astonished at her father not answering her. She was
accustomed to see him sunk in moody silence. Happily she could not
read the thoughts that her question had suggested. That he was not
truly one of the "beloved Christians" the father secretly acknowledged
to himself. He had not, he was sure, the firm faith in God and the
loving trust in man that belong to the children of the kingdom of
heaven.

CHAPTER IV.

NO SECRETS.

The children at the golden house had been regaled with milk and white
biscuits in honour of Nono's baptism, and were enjoying the treat in
the grove behind the cottage.

Nono lay on Karin's knee, and she was looking fondly at him, while Jan
stood silently beside her.

"I am a kind of a mother to him now, a real god-mother," she said. "I
don't mean to tell him that he is not quite my own child. I mean to
love him just like the others, and he shall never feel like a stranger
here."

"Now you are quite wrong, Karin," said Jan, with a very serious look in
his face. "He isn't your own child, and you can't make him so by
hiding the truth from him. Tell him from the very first how it was.
He won't love you the less because he was a stranger and you took him
in. It would be a poor way to bring him up so that he will 'grow in
virtue and the fear of the Lord,' as we promised this morning, to begin
by telling him what wasn't true right straight along. What would he
think of you when he found out in the end that you had been deceiving
him ever since he could remember? And the other children, too; they
know all about it. Could you make them promise to pretend, like you,
that Nono was their own brother? No good ever comes of going from the
truth. That's my notion!"

Jan stood up very straight as he finished, and sitting as Karin was, he
seemed to her in every way high above her.

"Yo