Nono modestly bowed, and murmured an answer, while his eyes glowed as if they were on fire.
The sound of little Decima sobbing broke in on the conversation. "That is a cold white princess!" she said. "She can't take me on her knee and tell me pretty stories. I don't like the cold white princess!"
Jan took Decima in his arms, while the colonel said pleasantly: "But we like her, Decima; and we loved the princess, both of us; and this gentleman's wife has her name; and he has written a letter to her that we want taken to the post-office at once, that she may get it on her name-day.—Can you go, Nono?"
Nono was glad to spring away with the letter, full of happy thoughts—that every one knew that it 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.