not like it. People's faces can look like them even when they
are dead. That is a kind of a dead house to me with the door tight
shut. That isn't the way at the cottage. The door is always open, in
a way, there. It says, 'Come in; you're welcome.' If the Master up
there," and he raised his thin finger towards the skies, "was to say to
Karin, 'Where is the guest-room?' she'd likely point to the house, all
one great room inside. She'd make a mistake, though. Her guest-room
is in _here_, where she let the Master in long ago." Pelle laid his
hand on his breast, where he supposed his honest old heart to be
beating. He may not have located it right physiologically, but
something whispered to Alma that the old man spoke the truth as he
added emphatically, "The guest-room is the heart, to my thinking; and
when the right Guest gets in there, sharing is easy, and a man or a
woman grows free and friendly like."

Pelle began to work very diligently, raking the newly-cut grass as if
he had had his say in the matter and had no more time for talking.

Alma went into the house with the savings-bank in her hand. A
savings-bank it proved to be as the months went on, with a very strong
draught down the little chimney. Alma had been in earnest when she had
said she meant to be economical. Her firm will was now set in that
direction. Coin after coin was dropped into the chimney, as swallow
after swallow sinks into similar quarters when a summer night comes on.
The accumulating store lay in secrecy and in stillness, save when Alma
now and then made the little house shake as if an earthquake threatened
it with destruction, while she listened delightedly to the jingling and
rattling within. She wished often that she had asked Nono to make real
windows with glass in them, through which she might have feasted on her
treasure. She did not like those little black pasteboards based with
white, and the pots of flowers painted behind them to simulate Karin's
geraniums.

Every Saturday evening Pelle came to be paid for his labours of the
week. His gains were duly handed over to Karin, and then Pelle went to
his little room, where he walked up and down, holding his head as high
as the ceiling would permit, in the comfortable consciousness that he
had turned his back on the poorhouse, and yet was not a burden at the
cottage.

The colonel had provided the money for Pelle from the first, and now
Alma had asked him to do the same for N