"You here, Alma!" answered Frans, starting up with affected surprise, then offering to his sister with formal courtesy the seat he had vacated at honest Jan's side.
Jan took himself up too—a slow process for him after a day of hard work. Bareheaded he stepped forward to welcome the young lady, who at once explained the object of her visit. Nono, who had seen her in the distance, now came to meet her, and willingly led the way to the shore. Karin, who was weeding in the vegetable-garden, did not know of the arrival of the guest.
Alma's delight with the group exceeded Nono's expectations. She used words about it such as she had heard her father employ in criticising works of art, and quite soared beyond Nono's comprehension as well as her own. The little house, just like Karin's cottage, charmed her completely. "Did you really make it all yourself, Nono; the house, I mean?" she said.
"Uncle Pelle helped me about it a little," said Nono honestly. "I am glad you like it."
"I like it so much that I want just such a one, to be really my own, but very, very much smaller it should be. I should like to use it as a money-box, a kind of savings-bank. The chimney should be open all the way down, so that I could drop the money in. The door should be locked, and I should have the key. I have a lock from an old work-box that would just do. Pelle could help you to fit it in, I am sure; he is so handy about everything. Will you do it, Nono?"
Of course Nono gladly said he would try; and then Alma added, "But I want to see Pelle too, and Karin, and Pelle's room, and the cottage."
"Pelle does not often let anybody come into his room but me," said Nono hesitatingly; "but Mamma Karin will be pleased, ever so pleased, to see you, I am sure."
"Perhaps I had better come another time," said Alma, remembering that Frans was on the premises, and not being at all sure what he might choose to say while she was trying to make herself agreeable at the golden house. So Alma made her way to the gate, escorted by Nono, and only left a message for the family, who had all assembled in the garden, which Frans was cheerily inspecting.
Nono began at once to plan about the savings-bank for Alma, and was much in deep consultation with Pelle. In the course of their conversations on the subject, Nono heard from the old man how the golden house came to be so very different from the usual red cottages of Sweden. He felt it was like Karin not to have told him the story. She had served as maid in her youth to an eccentric old lady, with whom she had lived until she was married. When her former mistress was near her end, and was gloomily looking forward to death, some words of simple faith and hope she had once heard from Karin came now to her mind like a new revelation, and the glad truths took deep root in her troubled heart. An abounding gratitude to Karin at once took possession of the dying woman, and she added an item to her will providing that Karin, who was struggling along with her young family about her, should have a bit of land of her own, and a cottage built upon it, like those the testator remembered in the part of Sweden where she had lived in her childhood. It should all be one great room up to the roof, but very comfortable and convenient. It must not, though, be red like any other cottage, but yellow at first, and always yellow; for Karin had been as good as gold to her mistress, and better. So this was the story of "the golden house," as the Italian had named it—a name it had borne ever since.
Bright yellow, and complete in all its appointments, was the little house that Nono at last took to Alma. If not gold itself, something golden, small and round, fell into Nono's hands as Alma received it. "Now, Nono," she said, "that is your gift from your godmother, for I am a kind of a godmother to you. It may be the last present you will have from me. I am going to be very saving now, and lay up all the money I can."