golden house without a translator. He wrote that the twins were the
admiration of the country round, and his pride too. So Karin was
thankful; but she missed the big, boisterous fellows, and said she felt
like an old table trying to stand on three legs, with only Thor and
Sven and Nono at home.

Pelle and Nono still had many cozy talks together, for which the boy
was much wiser and the old man much happier. But the time came when
the little Italian had a real sorrow.

Up in Stockholm the solemn bells were ringing, and mourning garments
and mourning hats were everywhere. In stately mansions and in dreary
attics real tears of sorrow were shed. The good princess was dead. In
the palace, in a grand apartment all draped in black, lay her silent,
wasted body, on a pompous funeral bier. Throngs of the loftiest and
the noblest of the land passed slowly by, in solemn procession, to pay
their last respects to the humble princess and the true-hearted woman
who had gone to her reward. Rough peasants and the poor of the city
came too, with their tribute of real mourning, grateful to see once
more the face of the loving friend who had cast sunlight into their
shadowed lives.

Far away in the country little Nono's heart was sorrowful. _His_
princess was dead! No one had been able to really comfort him.
Suddenly he seemed to see her bright and glad in the Holy City. She
was at home at last! She was where she belonged--where "the inhabitant
shall no more say, I am sick;" where "the wicked cease from troubling,
and the weary be at rest." Nono had now his princess in heaven, and he
went about his work with something of the light in his face which he
had seemed to see in hers.

From the hospital there came the news that little Decima was drooping
and sad. She said she must cry because the princess would never take
her on her knee again and call her "Decima Desideria." The child
declared she was well now, and she wanted to go home. Indeed she was
as well as she could ever be, the doctors said, but she would be a
cripple for life. She must always walk with a crutch. A change would
do the child good, was the universal opinion; so home came the little
girl, to her mother's great delight.

"Such a dear little useful creature as she had learned to be," Karin
said, and it was true. As to knitting and crochet-work, no one in that
parish could match her. The little lame girl really brought sunshine
back to the golden hous