"Nonsense," he said. "I am in no danger--but I must see what's happening

to the bank, and help if things have to be taken out."

"Carl, Carl...." was all the mother could get over her lips.

"Don't worry, Ann," he pleaded, bending over her for a minute, and his

voice took on a tenderness Keith seemed never to have heard before. "I

shall be careful, but I must go. If the fire should come this way, I'll

be back in time to help you all out."

She tried to cling to him, but he freed himself with gentle firmness. In

a minute more he was gone, and in the next second Keith's mother was at

the window looking out, though she had only her night-linen on and it

was late autumn. Unobserved and unrebuked, Keith joined her, and when he

looked up at the sky, his heart almost stopped beating.

A ghastly stillness reigned outside--except when it was merely

accentuated by the occasional sound of hurried steps along the street at

the top of the lane. Finally some one was heard passing through the

lane itself.

"Please," Keith's mother cried at the top of her voice. "What is it?"

"It's the German Church," a voice responded from below. "The whole spire

is flaming like a torch."

"Are we in danger down here?"

"Hard to tell. It depends on which way the spire falls. If it falls

outward, I fear the whole city will go."

Then he walked off.

By that time the servant girl had come in weeping as if she had just

heard her death-doom announced, and from the Granny was calling to them:

"You'll freeze to death, all of you, if you don't put on some clothes."

So they dressed, though difficulty, and then there was nothing to do but

to wait. The mother was at the window all the time, every few minutes

she said to the boy:

"Oh, I hope nothing happens to your father!"

At first it scared him more than did the light. But after a while it

began to have an opposite effect. He seemed to grow stiff and hard. The

excitement of the fire was still there, but it was overlaid and almost

neutralized by a vast impatience that seemed to take possession of his

whole being. He felt that if his mother made the same remark once more,

he should yell with rage and agony, and to save himself, he joined

Granny in the kitchen, where the girl had started a fire in order to

make some coffee.

The sky in that quarter was just as bright as in front, and no light was

needed in the room.

Suddenly he heard his mother cry out:

"Oh."

At the same time the brightness seemed to increase to something more

than daylight.

A quick change took place in the boy's heart. He ran into the

living-room and put his arm about his mother who was still lying in

the window.

"Don't worry, mamma," he whispered to her. "I'll take care of you."

There was something in his voice that brought the mother to herself. She

closed the window and took him in her arms and kissed him as she had

never kissed him before, he thought.

"It was the spire that fell just now," she said, "and if there is any

danger, your father will be here in a minute."

Almost as she spoke, the glare outside began to die down, though the sky

remained red and threatening until daybreak.

Then they had coffee, Keith being allowed an extra dose in his milk. And

soon afterwards the father returned to tell the story of the fire and

inform them that all danger was over as far as they were concerned.

For days afterwards the experiences of that night occupied Keith's mind.

The joy of excitement was probably uppermost in spite of all other

considerations, Beneath it was a vivid conception of the horrors of fire

that remained a live thing in his mind until he was well on in years,

sometimes waking him out of his sleep at night and setting his heart

palpitating wildly at the mere idea of danger. Lastly, however, there

was left from that momentous night a new attitude toward the mother that

implied a direct criticism--the first one that had ever broken into

clear consciousness. It did not make him love her less, but it changed

the character of his love in some subtle way. The father, on the other

hand, had gained by that night. There was something heroic about the

quiet way in which he walked off to take care of the bank, pushing all

other considerations aside until that duty had been filled.

XV

Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom. The

garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time. The rest

of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre.

The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side--a sheer cliff

of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary

expanse unbroken by a single window. Along the foot of it ran a long low

structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard. Thither men,

women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or

season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening

on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by

itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed

to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well

acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used

in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy

as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a

couple of times.

The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a

stairway in common at the corner where they joined. Its stairs and

landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window

on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing. At the

foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that

turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a

long walk. Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was

another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all

your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on

its stiff hinges.

The flats on the second and third floors ran straight through from the

lane to the rear building, but on the fourth floor, where Keith lived,

another family occupied the rooms looking upon the courtyard. And there

lived Jonas, the only other child in the house during Keith's

earliest years.

Jonas' father was a compositor--a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad

cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas

himself was pale and gawky and shy.

Those two families, living within a few feet of each other and meeting

daily on the common landing, had little more intercourse than if they

had been parted by miles of desert. The reserved and slightly eccentric

character of the neighbours had something to do with this separation,

but social distinctions counted for more. A compositor was, after all, a

mere workman, and Keith felt instinctively that his mother looked with

kindly contempt at the more primitive ways of the adjoining household.

Now and then he was permitted to go and play for a little while with

Jonas, who was a year older, but the other boy hardly ever entered

Keith's home. Nor was their playing much of a success. Jonas was

slow-witted and reserved, while alertness and frankness were among

Keith's most characteristic traits. But differences of temperament

accounted only in part for their failure to come together. Keith felt as

if a wall of some kind stood between them, and as if the eyes watching

from the other side of that wall were distinctly hostile at times. It

exasperated him as if it had implied terrible injustice, but it was only

in moments of extreme boredom he really cared. At such moments he would

also develop a passionate desire for a brother or sister. He might have

wished for a dog or a cat even, but the idea of such a disturbing

element in his parental home seemed too preposterous for serious

contemplation. In fact, so foreign was that idea to the home atmosphere,

that Keith went through the rest of his life envying other people's pets

without ever giving earnest thought to the acquisition of one

for himself.

Just as the parental attitude toward the nearest neighbours suggested a

kindly but unsentimental tolerance of inferiors, so it became

unmistakably tinged with a slightly jealous but unprotesting submission

to superiors whenever the lower floors were reached. A bachelor

official of some kind lived on the floor immediately below, with no one

but his housekeeper to share his spacious apartment. As deputy landlord,

Keith's father had to see this tenant like all the rest, but of social

intercourse there was none, while on the other hand, Keith's mother kept

up a gossiping acquaintance with the housekeeper. As far as Keith

himself was concerned, there was nothing more awe-inspiring than a

chance meeting on the stairs with the monocle, side-whiskers, precise

manners and doled-out civility of Mr. Bureau-Chief Broström. The

distance was so immense that even aspirations were precluded on the part

of the boy. He could imagine being king, but not a duly appointed

government official with a salary enabling him to occupy half a dozen

rooms practically by himself.

Of course, there were rumours afloat about a more intimate relationship

between the bureau chief and his fairly good-looking housekeeper, who

nominally had for her own that part of the flat which faced the

courtyard, and these rumours did not escape the boy's keen ears. While

their true inwardness was incomprehensible to him, they made him look

wonderingly at the housekeeper whenever he met her, and when he accepted

her gingersnaps and other tempting delicacies, he did so with a sense of

wickedness that limited his gratefulness.

A retired dry goods dealer and his good-hearted old wife lived on the

second floor. The Fernbloms were the aristocracy of the house in the

lane, having the best rooms, paying the highest rent and giving the

biggest parties, but even Keith guessed quite early that they were

simple souls, risen by thrift from very humble origins. They had a

single daughter, a girl of delicate health and looks with whom Keith

probably would have fallen in love hopelessly if she had stayed in the

house. But she married early, moved to some other city and was rarely

seen in her old home. Reports of her progress were received, of course,

and passed on in the hearing of Keith, but like so many other things not

touching his own life closely, it carried no real meaning to his mind.

The parties continued, and Keith's parents were often invited, partly

because the old couple was too simple-minded to think of social

distinctions, and partly because they both came from the same district

as Keith's Granny. Keith would be allowed to come along at times, and he

liked the idea of going and the good food, but otherwise he found it

dull business watching a lot of grown-up people seated solemnly about

square tables playing cards. Then, one day, the old lady died, and Keith

attended a part of the funeral, and from the window he saw the coffin

taken away in a hearse buried in flowers. It made him ask many questions

of his mother, but none of her answers brought death any closer to his

mind. After all, the old lady had been nothing to him, and if the

parties should cease as he heard was likely, the loss did not seem great

to him. The only thing that made a real difference to him was his

discovery that there would be no more of those ball-shaped gingersnaps

that the old lady used to bake herself and keep in an earthen jar almost

as tall as Keith.

The front part of the ground floor was used as an office of some kind in

those early days, but the middle part facing the long row of outhouses

was a human habitation. The rooms were so dark that a lamp had to be

used most of the day, and the principal entrance was direct from the

courtyard. An old workman and his wife lived there until the office in

front was changed into a coffee-house and those rooms toward the

courtyard became the kitchen. When it happened, some one told Keith's

mother a story which she in her turn conveyed to the boy.

History repeated itself, she said, and Keith already knew that history

was something that had happened before he was born. One hundred years

ago, when Gustavus III was king of Sweden and things were more exciting

than in these later days of outward and inward peace, there used also to

be a coffee-house on the ground floor, and a widely known one at that.

It occupied the floor above too, but this floor was in reality used as a

club, and the club was political and the men who frequented it were

conspiring against the government. This the police knew, and every so

often a lot of armed and uniformed men would surround the house and make

prisoners of those caught in the clubrooms on the second floor. But as a

rule no one was found there but a couple of sleepy and grouchy

attendants who cursed their luck at having to spend their lives in such

a dull place.

"But," Keith interrupted when the story got that far "you just told me

that the rooms had a lot of conspirators in them."

"So they had."

"And yet they were empty when the police came there? Do you really mean

that the people could make themselves invisible?"

"That's where the real story comes in," his mother explained. "You know

there is a long passageway between the front rooms of the Fernbloms and

their kitchen in the rear. It runs back of the stairs. The next time you

go through it, stamp your foot very hard, and you will hear that it

sounds hollow in one place. At that spot there used to be a trap door in

the floor. Now it is nailed down hard, but in the old days it could be

opened any time, and then you found a stairway below. It led into our

part of the cellar, where you still can find a couple of stone steps at

one end. Then the conspirators went down into the main cellar, and at

the back of it there was a tunnel leading under the rear part of the

house and the lane beyond to a house on the other side. That's the way

they escaped, and that's why the police never found anybody in

the club."

"What did the conspirators want," asked Keith after he had pondered the

matter for a while.

"I don't know exactly," his mother admitted, "but the king was killed by

one of them at last."

"I wish I had been there to defend the king," said Keith. Then a new

thought seized him suddenly: "I want to go down and see those steps."

"All right," his mother answered to his astonishment and joy. "Lena will

soon go down to get potatoes for dinner, and then you can go along, if

you only promise to come right up again."

Shortly afterwards the momentous expedition actually took place. Keith

had been as far as the outer cellar door before, but he had never cared

to go further. When you opened that door, you were met by an air so cold

and damp that it struck your face like a wet sheet, and the stairs fell

away into a black abyss that seemed bottomless.

The door was of iron, rounded at the top to fit the arch, and covered

with rust. It looked as if it had been in its place since the house was

built, and Keith had heard that the house could not be less than two

hundred years old. The key, which Keith had been permitted to carry

going down, was of iron too, and nearly twice as long as Keith's hand.

The lock was in keeping with the key, enormous in size and so stiff that

Lena had to use both hands to turn the key.

Having laid a firm hold of Lena's skirt, Keith followed her several

steps down until they reached a place in the opposite wall where a

single very tall step led up to another iron door, square-cut and

narrow, back of which lay the cellar used by the Wellanders. Lena

lighted a candle that burned with difficulty in the clammy air.

Inside nothing could be seen at first but a number of boxes and barrels

full of supplies, and back of them walls built out of enormous stone

blocks and dripping with moisture. As his eyes became accustomed to the

dim light, however, Keith perceived that the end toward the lane was

closed by a wall which even his inexperienced glance recognized as brick

and comparatively new. Squeezing between two large barrels of potatoes

he saw two stone steps at the foot of that wall and managed actually to

put his foot on one of them.

"I wish I knew what's back of that wall," he remarked at last.

"Oh, nothing," said Lena indifferently.

"There might be skeletons," he ventured after a pause.

"Jesus Christ, child," Lena almost screamed, looking as if she had

caught sight of a ghost. "Where in the world does he get such notions

from? Come out of here now. I think the master will have to go down for

potatoes himself hereafter."

"There was a skeleton in the story you told me the other night," Keith

protested with dignity, but not unaffected by the girl's

unmistakable fright.

"This is no place for stories of that kind," she declared pulling him

away from the barrels and almost forgetting to close the cellar door

behind her.

That evening Keith kept thinking of the story and the steps in the

cellar. He was sorry not to be able to walk up those stairs. And there

must be some old things left lying about on them. Then he imagined

himself a conspirator, hearing the police beating at the doors and

making his way through the stairway and the tunnel to some quiet,

unobserved doorway in another lane, much narrower and darker than their

own. It was exciting, the passage through the tunnel, which he could see

with his mind's eye--but the part of conspirator did not appeal to him.

He had seen policemen on the street several times. They were very tall

and carried sabres. Some time when he was conspiring they might be too

quick for him and get him before he could reach the secret stairway. It

would be much better, he decided finally, to be able to look them in the

face and say truthfully:

"I have done nothing at all!"

XVI

The regular meals of the day were four, not counting "afternoon coffee"

which was regarded as a special treat and always subject to

negotiations, though forthcoming as unfailingly as dinner or supper. It

was the natural and nominal counterpart of the "morning coffee," which

served to initiate the day's feeding. This first meal was consumed

separately, as each person was ready for work, and on the whole its name

was appropriate, although plenty of bread went with the coffee. Keith's

turn came generally a little after seven, when he sat down to a large

cup or bowl of half coffee and half milk into which had been broken a

good sized piece of hard Swedish rye-bread. A little sugar was allowed,

but no butter. This regimen began when Keith was less than three years

old, and he enjoyed it immensely, provided the bread had steeped long

enough to become soft, When, at last, he turned to rolls and butter

dipped into the coffee, it did not mean that his taste had changed, but

merely that his increasing sense of manhood found the earlier dish

too childish.

Breakfast was due about ll:30 and consisted generally of sundry

left-overs from the preceding day, bread and butter forming one of the

principal ingredients. Then came the main meal of the day, dinner,

between 3:30 and 4 in the afternoon. As a rule it had only two courses:

some meat dish or fish with potatoes, and a soup served last. Now and

then there was a vegetable. Desserts were reserved for special

occasions. To Keith each such meal was inseparably connected with the

parental admonition: "Eat plenty of bread with your meat, child." The

bread was of the hard kind already referred to--thin round cakes that

one broke to pieces and that gave the teeth plenty of work. Various

superstitions were invoked to promote the consumption of it. Thus the

failure to finish a piece already broken off was alleged to result in

the transfer of all one's strength to the actual consumer of the piece

left behind. Keith was a docile child in spite of his impulsiveness and

he did he was told and believed what he heard, but he often wondered why

the rules so strictly enforced himself did not apply to his parents.

"Afternoon coffee," generally accompanied by some form of sweet bread or

cake, "happened" about 5:30, and at 8 supper was served. The final meal

was commonly made up of sandwiches with porridge and milk, or perhaps,

when fate was remarkably propitious, thin pancakes with cranberry jam.

There might be an extra snack of food at a still later hour in case of

unexpected callers, but such visits were not frequent and Keith would be

asleep by that time anyhow.

It was different when parties were given to formally invited company.

Then Keith had to stay up--or pretend to do so--as long as the guests

remained, and he must have a share of whatever the house had to offer.

To such occasions he looked forward with feverish joy, not so much on

account of the good things dispensed as for the sake of feeling the

ordinary strict rules relaxed. Apart from Christmas, the principal

celebrations took place on his parents' birthdays and "namedays." Every

day in the Swedish calendar carries a name, and all those bearing it

have a right to expect felicitations and presents from their relations

and more intimate friends. In return they are expected to celebrate the

occasion with a party that gives an excuse for showing what the house

can do in the way of hospitality. The same thing applies to the birthday

anniversaries, only in a higher degree. Not to celebrate one's birthday

can only be a sign of poverty, miserliness or misanthropy, and to

overlook the birthday anniversary of a close relative is to risk an

immediate breach of connections.

Nothing was more familiar to Keith than his mother's open worries about

money and his father's occasional stern reference to the need of saving.

To the boy those complaints and warnings meant merely that the parents

were in a depressed and unfaourable mood, tending to draw the usual

constraint a little tighter about him. He was intensely sensitive to

atmosphere, and too often that of his home had the same effect on his

young soul as the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day

before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the

parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten,

although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily

routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested,

bent above all on seeing that "the house would not be shamed."

When the great day came, the home, always scrupulously neat, shone with

cleanliness. Every one worked up to the last minute. Cupboards and

pantries were full of unfamiliar and enticing supplies. The dining

table, opened to its utmost length, groaned under the burden of

innumerable cold dishes of tempting appearance, while from the kitchen

came the odours of more substantial courses still in the making. A one

end of Granny's bureau stood a battery of multicoloured bottles. The

other end was jammed with desserts and goodies meant to be served while

the guests were waiting for supper or during the card game that

generally followed it. Better than anything else, however, was the

father's loud laugh and eager talk, so rarely heard in the course of

their regular daily existence. Even then he might be displeased by some

slight slip of the boy's, and a sharp rebuke might follow, but it seemed

forgotten as soon as uttered, and of other consequences there were none

to be feared. Therefore, Keith wished that there might be a party every

day, and while there was one going on he sometimes caught himself

wondering whether, after all, he did not like his father as much as his

mother, or more.

From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents' attitude

toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a

sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive. To him

eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end. His

parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food,

and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the

principal source of enjoyment open to them. The same seemed true of

their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than

a comparison of past culinary enjoyments. Keith's father, for instance,

never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief

clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to

dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to "go bad"

before they could be sold. Four or five friends were drummed together.

The feast took place at night in the store itself. Bread, butter, salt,

pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to

the oysters.

"And when morning came, and I had to open the store, there was nothing

left but a keg full of empty shells," the father used to shout, laughing

at the same time so that it was hard to catch what he said. Then he

would smack his lips and add with earnest conviction: "I have never

tasted anything better unless it be the Russian caviar we used to import

for the Court."

Always it was a matter of quantity as well as quality. A feast was not a

feast without more than plenty. Eating was always in order. An offer of

a dish was as good as a command to partake. A refusal bordered on the

offensive. Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of

hospitality. Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in

the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one

of life's worst evils. To eat well was to be well, and the natural

conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat. Lack of

appetite was a misfortune as well as a dangerous symptom, and to eat

when not hungry was not only a necessity but a virtue.

Yet Keith longed for other things and he learned early that even eating

has its drawbacks.

XVII

Except on Sundays, the father rarely ate with the rest of the family. He

left in the morning before Keith was up and never came home for

breakfast. His dinner often had to wait until five or six or even later,

so he seldom cared to eat again when the others had their supper.

One afternoon, however, he appeared just as Keith and his mother were to

sit for dinner. It put her in a flutter and she couldn't get an

additional cover laid quick enough.

"I heard that mother was coming," he remarked as he seated himself at

the table.

Instantly Keith's mother shot an apprehensive glance at the boy and

exclaimed:

"Please try to be a real nice boy now, so that your grandmother does not

get a bad impression of you." Then she added, turning to her husband:

"She never says anything, but she always looks as if I spoiled Keith

hopelessly."

"Well," the father rejoined thoughtfully, "she brought up four children

of her own without anybody else to help her, and there was not one among

us who dared to disregard her slightest word."

"How about Henrik," the mother suggested a little tartly.

"Yes, the one spared is the one spoiled," admitted the father with a

sigh. "He was the youngest, and while he was licked like all of us, her

hand never seemed quite as firm with him as with the rest. The worst

thing parents can do to children is to let them have their own will."

Keith was listening with one ear only. His thoughts were on Uncle

Henrik, who would put in an unheralded appearance now and then, always

when the father was away and always to the consternation of the whole

household. Although hustled out of the kitchen as soon as the unbidden

visitor arrived, Keith had had a good look at him several times and had

also overheard the parents discussing him. He was still comparatively

young. Yet he looked like animated waste matter. His face seemed to hang

on him. His mouth was loose and void of expression. His eyes were

bleared and ever on the move. He spoke mostly in a toneless drawl, that

sometimes turned into a shrill whine, but also at rare intervals could

change into a soft, heart-winning purr. His clothing was poorer and

coarser than that of any other person seen by Keith. Once or twice it

seemed to the boy like a repulsive uniform, and he heard his parents

speak with mingled disgust and relief of some house or institution that

was never fully named.

"No one has a better heart than Henrik," Keith heard his father say

once, "but he has no more spine than a cucumber, and he can't keep away

from drink."

Then the food was brought in, and Uncle Henrik was forgotten. As usual,

there was a meat course to begin with, and Keith ate what for him was a

big portion. Nor did he get into any trouble beyond having an extra

large piece of hard bread put beside his plate by the father and finding

the disposal of it rather difficult.

The meat was followed by a large bowl of soup, and the very sight of it

made Keith look unhappy--a fact that did not escape his father.

Keith cared little for soups, while both parents liked them, and he had

a particular dislike of soups made on a meat stock, like the one just

brought in. For some reason that Keith might have thought funny under

other circumstances, it was called Carpenter Soup, and it contained a

lot of rather coarse vegetables. Among these were green celery and

parsnips, both of which filled the boy with an almost morbid disgust.

While the mother was serving and Keith was waiting in dumb agony, it

flashed through his mind that Uncle Granstedt might be eating that kind

of soup. If so, the boy thought, he would rather let himself be killed

than made a carpenter.

As the turn came to his own plate, Keith tried to catch his mother's eye

with a signalled appeal to put in as little as possible, but she was

talking to her husband and not noticing the boy at all. And so, at last,

he found himself confronted with a plate filled to the brim.

The first few spoonfuls went down without much resistance, chiefly

because he confined himself to the fluid part of the soup. Then it

seemed of a sudden as if one more mouthful would choke him, and his

eating became a mere dallying with his spoon.

"Go on and finish your soup," the father urged sternly.

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I have eaten all I can."

"That does not matter," rejoined his father. "One must always finish

what is on one's plate."

"But I don't like it," Keith blurted out in a moment of

desperation--which was unfortunate.

"Children have no likings of their own," said the father, putting down

his spoon. "They must like what their parents give them. And you will

finish that soup--if I have to feed you myself to make you do it."

Two more spoonfuls went down by an heroic effort. Then Keith burst into

tears, and his father's face grew still darker as he asked scornfully:

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

Keith did not care at that moment. In fact, he thought that if girls had

a right to cry, he would rather be one.

His mother was trying to coax him with kind words, and he actually

raised the filled spoon to his lips once more, but the sensation within

him was such that he let it drop again with a splash. That was the

crowning offence, and the feeding process began at once. His father took

him by the neck with one hand and administered the spoon with the other.

It was done firmly and perhaps harshly, but in such a manner that the

boy was not hurt.

Keith cried and coughed and swallowed--and in the midst of that ordeal

he noticed the wonderful softness of his father's hands. But his heart

was full of bitter resentment, and he wished that he could grow up

on the spot.

What the end might have been is hard to tell, had not a slight

commotion been heard from the kitchen at that juncture.

"There is mother now," said the father, letting go his hold on Keith's

neck. "Wipe your eyes and try to act like a boy. Some day we'll put you

into skirts."

Keith did not care. He knew now that he would not have to eat the rest

of the soup. That was the one thing in the world that seemed to matter

to him. His tears ceased. But now his body was shaken by a convulsive

sob. On the whole his mood was one of hopeless resignation.

XVIII

"I am glad to see you, mother," said Keith's father, rising quickly as a

little old woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. His tone surprised the

boy. There was warmth in it, but still more of reverence bordering on

awe, and also something of pride. Thus might a queen be greeted, but

only by those nearest and dearest to her. What struck the boy most of

all, however, was the world of difference lying between that tone and

the one in which the father addressed his wife even in moments of

closest understanding. It gave Keith his first clear glimpse of the

distinction between love and respect, between sympathy and trust.

"So you are home, Carl," the grandmother remarked in her usual quiet,

matter-of-fact manner. Then she turned to her daughter-in-law, who had

also risen to her feet: "Is your head as bad as usual, Anna?"

"Thank you," answered Keith's mother, and the boy could sense that she

was not at her ease although she smiled pleasantly. "Those new powders I

got from Dr. Sköld helped a great deal."

"Hm," grunted the older woman as she walked across the room and sat down

on a chair not far from Keith. "I had no time or money to bother with

powders at your age, but times have changed."

She was taking in every detail of the room as she spoke, without looking

pointedly at anything in particular. Suddenly Keith, who followed her

every movement as if hypnotized, was startled by meeting the hard gaze

of her calm, pale-blue eyes. Those eyes illuminated her small, wrinkled

face so completely that the boy saw nothing else. Gone were her trimmed

wig, her black shawl, her wide skirt of a checkered grey. Gone were even

her thin, tight lips that used to close with the firm grip of a vice.

Nothing was left but the eyes that looked him through and through until

it was impossible for him to stand still any longer.

"What is the matter with Keith," she asked. "Sick, too?"

"No, thank heaven," the mother blurted out. "We have nothing to complain

of his health--"

"No," the father broke in with a suggestion of grim humour, "not about

his health, but--"

"Of course," the old lady said with a nod of comprehension. "I don't

wish to criticize anybody or anything, but I don't think Keith is very

obedient. He wants to pick and choose, I suppose, as if the food were

not good enough for him."

"Well, he can't," the father rejoined.

"Children should eat anything and be glad to get it at that. Mine never

thought of refusing what I gave them. If they ever had...."

She didn't finish the sentence, but it made Keith feel that he would

never have dared one word of protest about the soup if the grandmother

had been there a little earlier. Yet she spoke without marked feeling,

without hardness, almost kindly. It was plain as she went on, that she

believed intensely in what she said, and that it touched the very

foundations of existence as she saw it:

"Children owe everything to their parents, and the least they can do in

return is to accept thankfully what they get. That is what I did in my

childhood, and I never dreamt of anything else. I had no will but that

of my parents, and I knew that I could not and should not have any will

of my own."

Everybody but the grandmother was still standing. The mother's face bore

clear evidence of conflicting tendencies to accept and reject. Looking

at her, Keith felt, as he often did, that there was something within her

that gave his view of matters a fighting chance. The father, on the

other hand, seemed of a sudden to have become a child himself, listening

obediently and with absorbed approval. It looked almost as if he were

still afraid of that white-haired, fragile, tight-lipped little woman,

and the sight of him filled Keith with a vague uneasiness.

"Please sit down," said the grandmother at last. "I did not mean to

disturb you, and Keith looks as if he might fall in a heap any moment."

"Why don't you stand up straight, Keith," asked his mother. "You will

never grow up unless you do, and your grandmother will think worse of

you than she already does."

"I am not blaming the child," the old lady began in the same passive,

quietly assured tone. But before she got further, the father broke in:

"I think Keith had better go and play in his own corner--and please keep

quiet, for grandmother and I have important things to talk of."

Keith retired as directed, and at that moment growing up seemed to him a

more unreal and impossible thing than ever.

Not long afterwards the grandmother left, both parents escorting her to

the outside door. When they returned to the living-room, Keith heard his

mother say:

"I don't see why she should always find fault with Keith. He's not a bit

worse than Brita's Carl, whom she is helping to spoil just as fast

as she can."

"Well, that's her way," replied the father, paying no attention to the

latter part of the remark. "She was brought up that way herself, and

that's the way she brought up the four of us."

He was evidently in high good-humour and did what Keith had never seen

him do before when no company was present. He got out a cigar from one

of the little drawers in the upper part of mamma's bureau and sat down

at the still covered dining table to smoke it. This made Keith feel

almost as if they were having a party, and soon he sneaked out of his

corner and joined the parents at the table. First he stood hesitatingly

beside his mother, but little by little he edged over to the father

until he actually was leaning against the latter's knee without being

rebuffed. The father even put his hand on Keith's head, and the soup

episode became very distant and dim.

"She used to lick us mercilessly," the father said as if speaking

chiefly to himself, and as he spoke there was a reminiscent smile on his

face and not a trace of resentment in his voice. "But she was absolutely

just about it--so just that she used to lick all four of us whenever one

had earned it. That was to keep the rest from thinking themselves any

better, she said, and also because she felt sure that all of us had

deserved it, although she had not happened to find it out."

"I think it hard and unjust," Keith's mother protested. "And I don't

believe in beating children all the time."

"Those were hard days," the father mused on, "and everybody did it, and

children seemed to know their place better then. I don't think we

suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make

us think less of mother. She had her hands full, too, and not much time

to think of nice distinctions. We were all small when father died, and

Henrik was just a baby. There was no one but her to look after us, and

how she did it, God only knows. But I have never heard her speak one

word of complaint, and she always managed. Sometimes there was little

enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you

herself, but she always had something for us. Then we had to go to work

just as soon as we could. I was thirteen when I began to add my share to

the common heap."

"Did you go to school," Keith ventured, having recently overheard some

talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

"I did," the father replied, "but not long. I wanted to study, and my

teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me

free admission to the higher school. But mother wouldn't listen. And I

suppose it was not to be."

"Did you like school," asked Keith, not having the slightest idea of

what a school might be like.

"Yes, I liked all about it but one thing. There was a big boy who

bullied all the rest, and no one cared to fight him. He went for me the

very first day of the term, and when I fought back, he gave me such a

licking that I could hardly walk into the schoolroom afterwards. The

next day he asked if I had had enough, and I told him I meant to go on

till he had enough. So we started right in again, and he licked me worse

than the day before. But I just couldn't give in. For three whole months

we fought every day, and each day I made it harder for him. And one day

I got the upper hand of him at last, and gave it to him until he began

to cry and begged for mercy. Then I let him go, but no sooner had I

turned my back on him, than he picked up a small sapling that was lying

around and struck me over the head with it. There was a piece of root

standing straight out, and it hit me right on top of my head so that the

blood squirted out and I fainted on the spot. Then he had to leave

school, and the last thing I heard of him was that the police had got

him for something still worse."

"Oh, Carl," the mother cried with a shudder, "you should have complained

to the teacher!"

"The teacher was watching us all the time, although I didn't know it.

He told me afterwards that he would have helped me any time I asked, but

that he would have thought less of me for asking."

Keith stared hard at his father and tried to imagine himself doing the

same thing, but his fancy did not seem to work well in that direction.

Later, when he was in bed, the father's story came back to him. Somehow

it made him feel very proud, but also uneasy. He felt that there nothing

more wonderful than to fight some one stronger than oneself and win, and

soon he was busy slaying giants and dragons and bears and other monsters

that he had heard Granny tell about. But he tried to think of himself as

fighting a real boy in the way as his father, his dreams seemed to peter

out ignominiously.

Then his mother came to in to tuck him in and make him say his prayers

and kiss him good-night. Suddenly he flung his arms about her neck in a

passion of craving for tenderness and protection. Putting his mouth

close to her ear, he whispered a question that had nothing to do with

the father's story or his fancies of a few moments ago.

"Why must I eat things I don't want?"

XIX

The next Sunday morning found Keith more than usually restless. Half a

dozen times in quick succession he appealed to the mother for

suggestions as to what to do. Finally she turned to the father, who was

preparing to go out:

"Can't you take him along, Carl? He has never seen the bank, and he

really should get out a little."

For a little while the father said nothing. Then he spoke directly to

Keith:

"Put on your coat and cap."

The boy who had been looking and listening with open mouth and a heart

that hardly dared to beat, became wildly excited.

"Now, Keith," the father admonished, "you can't go unless you behave."

"Where's my coat, mother," asked Keith eagerly and unheedingly.

"Don't you know that yourself," growled the father. "You are a big boy

already, and you should keep your own things in order."

"I have hung it up where he cannot reach it," the mother interceded.

"I'll get it for him."

The coat and the cap were on at last, but then began the struggle about

the muffler and the mittens. The mother had crocheted them herself for

Keith and insisted that they should be worn whenever he went outdoors

during autumn and winter. The muffler was long and white, with blue

rings two inches apart, and in shape more like a boa.

Keith wanted the mittens, because his hands got cold easily, but not the

muffler, which, he thought, made him look like a girl.

The father objected to everything of that kind, which he said, tended to

make the boy soft and susceptible to colds. He himself did not put on an

overcoat until the weather grew very severe, and he never buttoned it,

no matter how cold it grew. His throat was always bare, and he never

wore gloves of any kind. Nor did he ever put his hands in his pockets

while walking. He had a favourite trick of picking up a handful of snow,

which he rolled into a ball and carried in his hand until it became hard

as ice. His hands were milk-white, beautifully shaped and well cared

for. It was impossible to believe that for many years they had done the

hardest kind of work, often outdoors and generally in a poorly heated

drafty shop. He was proud of them, although he pretended not to care

when anybody spoke of them, and they filled Keith with admiration and

envy. He tried to follow the father's example, but with the result that

his hands grew red as boiled crawfish and began to ache under the nails

until he had to cry.

"You bring him up a woman," the father muttered, when Keith was ready at

last.

Then they left, having been kissed several times each by the mother, who

warned Keith not to let go of his father's hand under any circumstances

while they were on the streets.

Down in the passageway on the ground floor, Keith started to take off

the muffler.

"No," said the father. "Now you keep it on. Your mother has told you to

wear it, and you must not take it off behind her back."

"But you didn't want me to have it on," Keith protested in genuine

surprise.

"No, I didn't, because I want you to be hardened and grow up like a man.

But there is something I want still more, and that is for you to obey

your mother, first because children should always obey their parents,

and secondly because it makes your mother very unhappy if you don't do

as she tells you."

His tone changed slightly during the last part of his remark. Something

of an appeal came into it and went straight to Keith's heart, filling it

with a glow of righteous determination. It was always that way with him.

A word spoken kindly made him eager to comply, and that was particularly

the case if it came from some person not given to sentimentality.

In the lane they turned and saw the mother lying in the window to watch

them. As usual, kisses were thrown back and forth as they passed up the

lane, but Keith felt rather impatient about it, and it was with a marked

sense of relief he turned the corner into East Long Street. He was eager

to push ahead into unknown regions and did not care to look back.

Although he spoke little enough, the father proved a more genial

companion than Keith had dared to expect. In fact, he had been a little

oppressed at the thought of being entirely alone with the father, which

was quite a new experience to him. But now he found it a pleasure, and

their communion seemed more easy than when the mother was with them. He

walked sedately enough, clinging to one of his father's soft, white

hands, but every so often he ventured a skip and a jump without being

rebuked, and on the whole he felt the kind of happiness that used to

come on Christmas Eve, after the father had started to distribute

the presents.

Keith had frequently accompanied his mother as far as the little square

at the end of the street, and he pointed proudly to the grocery store

where he had helped to buy things.

"Yes," responded the father, and again his tone seemed strangely

unfamiliar to the boy. "I might have had such a store myself, if luck

had been with me."

The idea was more than Keith could digest at once. It was too

overwhelming, and once more he looked at his father with the feeling of

wonder and awe that sometimes took hold of him almost against his

will--a feeling that clashed hopelessly with the nervous shyness

commonly inspired by the father's stern manners.

"Why didn't you get it," the boy ventured at last.

"Because I was born under the Monkey Star," replied the father grimly.

The boy wondered what kind of star that was, but still more he wondered

at the father's mood which appeared to indicate a displeasure not

directed at the questioner. Before Keith could ask anything more, they

had started across one of the open market places that line the

fresh-water side of the old City.

The place was empty except for a few closed and abandoned booths. But at

the foot of it lay rows of one-masted sailing vessels loaded halfway up

their masts with piles of fire-wood. In the background, beyond a small

sheet of water crossed by a low iron bridge, rose abruptly the rocky

walls of the South End, with funny old houses perched precariously along

their edges. Keith stared so hard at all the new things that not a

single question had a chance to escape him before they entered another

street and stopped in front of a stone house that to him looked like

a castle.

It had a real portal instead of an ordinary doorway, and the inside was

still more impressive. Keith had been to church once or twice, and for a

moment he thought himself in one. But he saw no seats, and his father

did not look solemn at all. The walls were of stone curiously streaked

and coloured. The ceiling was so far up that Keith had to bend far

backwards to see it. It was full of ornaments and supported by two rows

of tall round stone pillars so thick that Keith could not get his arms

halfway around one of them. In the background rose a very broad and

seemingly endless stairway of white stone. While they climbed it step by

step, Keith wondered if the king in his palace had anything like it.

Arrived at the top at last, they turned into a sort of lobby--a rather

bare room with several plain desks by the windows and many hooks along

the inner wall. There the father took off both his coats and armed

himself with a huge feather duster and a rag.

"Remember, Keith," he said in his ordinary tone, "that you may look as

much as you please, but that you must not touch anything. If you do, you

can never come here again."

Having passed through several smaller rooms, they emerged finally into a

hall so bright and spacious that Keith stopped with a gasp and for a

moment thought himself in the open air again. It was as wide as the

building itself and three sides were full of large windows A counter of

mahogany that looked miles long ran from one end to the other. The place

behind it contained many desks so tall that Keith could not have reached

the tops of them with his raised hand. But from a distance he could see

that they were full of tempting things--paper and pens and pencils, red

bars of sealing wax, glue-pots and rulers and glistening shears.

Two men, also in their shirt-sleeves, were busy at the desks, dusting

them and arranging the things on top of them. And the father quickly

went to work in the same way.

It seemed interesting to Keith, who would have liked to try his hand at

it. But it also disconcerting for some reason he could not explain and

for a while he watched the father as if unwilling to believe his own

eyes. Somehow it did not tally with certain notions formed in Keith's

head on the night when the church was burning. At last he up to his

father and asked:

"Is this where you always work?"

"No," was the answer given with a peculiar grimness. "This is for the

officials."

"What are they?"

"Oh, tellers and cashiers and bookkeepers."

Keith noted the words for future inquiries. For the moment they meant

nothing to him.

"Why are you not here too," he persisted.

"Because I am only an attendant--a mere _vaktmästare_. That is a fact

you had better fix in your mind once for all, my boy."

"Is that your little boy, Wellander," one of the other men called out at

that moment. "Let us have a look at him."

Hand-shakings and head-pattings followed as Keith was presented to

"Uncle" This and "Uncle" That. He didn't object and he didn't care. They

looked nice enough, and their talk was friendly, but somehow he felt

that his parents did not care for them. Some of the glamour had left the

place. In spite of its magnificence, he did not like it, although he was

glad to have seen it.

Discovering a wastepaper basket full of envelopes with brightly coloured

marks on them, he regained his interest a little. He knew those marks

for stamps and they had pictures on them which attracted him very much.

So he made a bee-line for the basket and proceeded to pick out what he

liked best.

"Have you forgotten what I told you," he heard his father shout to him.

"They have been thrown away," he said going toward the father.

"That is neither here nor there," was the sharp answer he got. "You know

they are not yours, and so you must not touch them. Put them back

at once."

Keith did as he was told, wondering if he really had done anything wrong

or if his father merely objected for some reason of his own.

Then he walked around uninterested and forlorn until they were ready to

go home again. The stairway seemed shorter as they descended, but the

pillars were tall and thick as before. And on the way home his father

found a little shop open and bought him a few _öre's_ worth of

hard candy.

It was the only time Keith could ever remember his having done such a

thing.

XX

The lodger happened to be away when they got home, and the mother had

opened the door to the parlour in order to get a little more air and

light into the living-room. After dinner the father went into the

parlour to take a nap on the big sofa, while the mother settled down

comfortably in her easy chair, a piece of handiwork on her lap as usual.

Keith took up his customary position on the footstool to tell her what

he had seen and done during his morning excursion.

She was eager to hear everything and helped him along with questions,

and yet there ran through her very eagerness a subtle inner resistance

which the boy felt vaguely. It as if she never really cared for anything

concerning him in which she herself had not taken part.

The original glamour had returned to every aspect of his new experience,

and he tried excitedly to describe the wonders of the vestibule, the

stairway and the big hall. In the midst of it he paused suddenly and

fell to staring into vacancy.

"Was that all," she asked, puzzled by his silence.

"Lena dusts our rooms, doesn't she," was his rather startling

counter-question.

"Mostly," the mother replied with a searching glance at his puckered

brows. "Although I sometimes ..."

"You don't have to," the boy broke in.

"No" she admitted, "but then I am sure it is properly done."

"Is that why papa dusts the tables in the bank?"

A pause followed during which it was the mother's turn to stand the

boy's intense scrutiny.

"No," she said at last. "He does it because it is a part of his work,

and a shame it is that he has to. Scrub-women come in and do the rest of

the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the

attendants have to take turns doing that part of it. That's why your

father has to leave so very early in the morning."

Mother and son lapsed into silence once more. It was broken by another

question from the boy.

"Why couldn't I take some stamps that had been thrown away?"

"Had your father said anything about it before you took them?"

"He told me not to touch anything."

"Then you couldn't because he had told you to leave things alone. He is

so careful in all such matters. Sometimes he goes a little too far,

perhaps, but you can be sure that he means right. Other people want the

stamps, and there is a lot of gossip and envy about everything, and he

is too proud to be dragged into that sort of thing. It is always better,

Keith, to leave alone what you know is not your own. Honesty endures

beyond all else."

Keith made no direct response, but sprang one more irrelevant question:

"Why didn't papa get the grocery store?"

"How do you know," the mother demanded with a quick glance at him.

"Papa told me."

"Well," she drawled as if thinking. Then she settled back in the chair,

her mind made up. "Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time

there was a rich old man who owned a grocery store."

"That's where they sell prunes and raisins and sugar," the boy put in.

"And the store was so fine," she went on unheedingly, "that the old man

was permitted to sell all those things to the king's own kitchen. The

old man had many assistants, but at the head of them all was a young man

who knew just what to do, because he had worked in such stores ever

since he was a little boy. And he was so honest and able and polite that

the people liked him very much and came to the store for his sake, but

the old man liked him more anybody else."

"Was the old man nice," Keith asked.

"Yes, indeed, but he was also very peculiar, and the most peculiar thing

about him was that he hated all women and thought that a man who married

was lost for ever."

"Did he have any children?"

"No, men who want no wives get no children. That is a part of their

punishment. And so when the owner of the store got older and older, and

began to feel tired, he didn't know to whom he should leave the store.

You may be sure that he thought it over many times, because he was

exceedingly proud of the store and wanted it to go on. The result of his

thinking was that he decided to give it to the young man whom he trusted

and liked so much."

"How did the young man look," Keith broke in.

"Something like your father, I should say. But while all this was going

on, the young man had met a princess and fallen in love with her...."

"A real princess," asked the boy with wide-open eyes.

"All princesses are real in their own opinion. And she and the young man

had promised to marry each other, and this the old man learned at last.

Then he was very, very angry and told the young man that he was a fool.

And when the young man answered that there were many of his kind, and

that he had pledged his word, the old man told him that he would not get

the store unless he promised to have nothing more to do with the

princess. But the young man loved her and would not give her up, and so,

you see--he didn't get the store. Don't you think that was nobly

done, Keith?"

"Ye-es," the boy assented without particular enthusiasm, "but if he had

got the store, we should have been rich now?"

"We," repeated the mother in a funny tone. "Why, then there would have

been no _we_."

"Why not," he demanded.

"Or it might have been worse still," she whispered as if momentarily

forgetful of the boy's presence.

"There is your father now," she said a moment later, when a slight stir

was heard in the adjoining room. "Don't say anything more about the

store.... Do you know what your father wanted to be most of all?"

Keith looked up speculatively as his father appeared at the doorway to

the parlour--a man of medium height, who stooped because he was

nearsighted, and so looked shorter than he was, but also stronger

because of the great width of his shoulders.

"I can tell you," the father put in. "When I couldn't study, I wanted to

be a sailor, and I tried to take hire on a ship whose master knew me and

wished to help me. Then they found out that I was too nearsighted to

steer by the compass, and that was the end of it. Didn't I tell that I

was born under the Monkey Star?"

"Don't talk like that, Carl," the mother protested, rising to give him a

kiss. "You have done very well, and there is no man in the bank more

respected than you."

"Yes," he admitted with something like a grin. "They know I wouldn't

steal even if I had a chance, and they let me collect four million

crowns, as I did the other day, but I shall never get beyond where I am

today. So there you are--what's struck for a farthing will never be

a dollar."

Keith's head was still full of what he had heard when he went to bed

that night, and he didn't know whether to feel happy or unhappy about

it. His father had grown bigger and more interesting in some ways, and

yet the boy's chief impression was of a failure and a fall. It was this

impression that stuck most deeply in his mind.

XXI

Keith's home was not one of those hospitable places with the doors

always wide open, to which people are drawn almost against their will

and from which they come away with difficulty. Perhaps it was, above

all, the spirit of the father that settled this matter. To him, more

than to any Englishman, his home was his castle, and he liked to keep

the drawbridge raised against unwelcome company. And most company seemed

unwelcome, although at times, when the right persons appeared at the

right moment, he could be happy as a child and unbend in a manner that

made Keith gape with wonder. When her good mood prevailed, the mother,

too, was touchingly eager for the diversion provided by a chance visit,

but when the dark moments came, she shunned everybody, while at the same

time she watched any prolonged failure to call with morbid

suspiciousness, ascribing it promptly to a sense of superiority toward

herself and her family. Granny was glad enough to talk to anybody, but

she would never ask any one to call, and if no one came, she was apt to

dig out some particularly bitter proverb, like "money alone has

many friends."

Both parents could be hospitable enough when occasion so demanded, but

it was a formal thing with them, exercised only after due preparation.

In many ways, they were large-heartedly generous, but only in a serious

manner, when actual need required it. They might give freely beyond what

they could well afford, but the father could be out of humour for days

if some little thing regarded as particularly his own had been touched

or used by another member of the family.

As it was, people came and went a good deal, but they came formally or

because some specific errand brought them, and most of the errands,

Keith soon realized, were connected with a desire for help. The old

women living like nightbirds in the garret, would drop in frequently,

and almost invariably with some tale of woe that sooner or later drew

from the mother relief in one form or another. And one of Keith's

earliest tasks, half coveted and half feared, was to walk up to one of

the attics with a plate of soup or a saucer full of jam or some other

tidbit. Others would come from the outside, and they, too, were mostly

old women. They always wanted to pat Keith, and he objected passionately

to all of them. His especial aversion was a gaunt old woman with a big

hooked nose and a pair of startlingly large, sad-looking eyes. She

always smiled, and her smile was hopelessly out of keeping with the rest

of her face. The very sight of her made Keith forget all his manners.

Time and again his mother rebuked him and tried to bring him around by

telling the old woman's story--a story of wonderful self-sacrifice and

heroic struggle--but it made no difference to him. There was something

about the sight of poverty and unhappiness and failure that provoked him

beyond endurance, and sometimes he would turn to his mother with a

reckless cry of:

"Why do you let them come here at all?"

For the friends of the family, who came there on an equal footing, he

showed more respect, and for a few of them he felt a real liking. As a

rule, however, they inspired him with nothing but indifference, and his

one reason for greeting them with some approach at cordiality was that

they brought a change into the general monotony of the home, and that

their coming might lead to the distribution of some dainties out of the

ordinary. Some of his parents' friends were poor and growing poorer.

Others had the appearance of doing well and hoping for more. It made no

difference to Keith. They were all middle-aged, sedate and preoccupied

with their own little affairs. They tried to be nice to him, but they

did not interest him, and his main grievance against them--not clearly

understood by any means--was that they brought nothing into his life of

what he wanted.

Had he been asked what he wanted, he would have answered unhesitatingly:

"Some one to play with."

XXII

Having whined and nagged until his mother no longer could bear it, Keith

at last obtained the cherished permission to go and play in the lane.

"But look out for horses," warned his mother as he stood in the doorway

ready to run. "And don't run out of sight, and you must come when I

call, and--you had better keep away from other boys, or you may come

home quite naked this time."

"What do you mean," asked Keith, turning to see whether the mother was

joking or talking seriously.

"Don't you recall when those boys took your coat from you, and you came

up here crying?"

There could be no mistake about her meaning just what she said. Keith

stood still thinking very hard. Here was another memory that he could

not remember at all. There was not a trace of it left in his mind, and

yet it must have happened. It sounded exciting, too, and he wished to

know all about it.

"You had better close the door," his mother suggested.

"All right," said Keith, hastening to close the door from the outside

and make a dive for the stairway. There would be plenty of time to ask

about the loss of his coat later. He was halfway down the first flight

when he heard the kitchen door open behind him, and his heart leapt into

his throat.

"You must go down the stairs quietly," his mother called out from above,

whereupon Keith's heart resumed its normal position.

He descended the rest of that flight on tip-toe. The second one was

taken more rapidly, and down the last one he went two steps at a time,

the little iron plates under his heels hitting the stones with a ring

that echoed through the old house.

In the lane he found them loading a dray in front of the distillery, and

he started across to watch the men straining at the next barrel. He had

hardly taken a step in that direction, however, when a loud pop was

heard from the black cave forming the entrance to the distillery. It

was followed first by a single cry, and then by a hubbub of voices. A

second later a young man came running out and threw himself prone into

the gutter, where a trickle of water was to be seen.

Keith was too astonished to be frightened at once. He could not

understand what made the man act in this way. Then another man came out

in a rush and began to beat the legs of the man in the gutter with his

hands, and Keith suddenly noticed that little blue flames were dancing

up and down the grimy leathern trousers of the first man.

The memory of the night when the church burned leaped into his mind,

making him turn instinctively toward the passageway and his

mother's lap.

At that moment a third man appeared carrying a big tank full of water

which he poured over the man in the gutter. The latter got on his feet

and limped back into the distillery, supported by his two comrades.

Keith was left behind, trembling a little and gazing curiously at the

hanging head of the dray-horse which had not made the slightest movement

during the previous excitement.

"He'll have to go to bed," said a sleepy voice at his shoulder just

then.

Keith swung around as if touched by an electric shock. Before him he saw

another small boy, apparently of his own age, but a little taller, and

light-haired like himself.

"What's your name," asked Keith as soon as he caught his breath.

"Johan," answered the other stolidly, but not unfriendly.

"Have you got another name like me?"

"My name is Johan Peter Gustafsson," was the reply given in the tone of

a lesson painfully learned.

"Where do you live?"

"Right here."

"Not in our house," Keith protested.

"No, down there," Johan explained, pointing to the little side door

leading into the courtyard of one of the corner houses at the Quay.

"What's your father?" Keith continued his cross-examination.

"_Vaktmästare_" said Johan indifferently.

"So is mine," Keith cried eagerly. "Have you got a bank, too?"

Johan shook his head as if unable to grasp what Keith meant.

"My popsey works in the office down there," he said, "and we live beside

it, and at night I go with popsey when he carries all the mail to the

postoffice."

"Why do you call him popsey," inquired Keith, fascinated by the new word

and wondering if he would dare use it to his own father.

"Because that's what he is," Johan declared.

A few minutes later they were playing together as if they had known each

other for ever. They had just discovered an unusually large and tempting

pin in a crack at the bottom of the gutter, when Keith heard his mother

calling from the window above:

"What are you doing, Keith?"

"Oh, just playing," he replied without looking up, forgetful of

everything but the pin that would not come out of the crack.

"Who is that with you?"

"That is Johan," Keith shouted back triumphantly, "and his papa is a

_vaktmästare_, too."

"Come right up and let me speak to you," was the insistant rejoinder

from above.

"Oh, please, mamma," the boy pleaded, his voice breaking a little,

"can't I stay just a little longer?"

"You must come at once," his mother commanded.

"Is that your mumsey," Johan asked.

"It is my mamma," Keith retorted, his attention momentarily diverted by

Johan's most peculiar way of referring to his parents.

"Then you had better go," advised the new friend sagely, "or she will

tell your popsey, and then you know what happens to you."

"I think I can come down again, if you wait for me," cried Keith as he

ran into the long dark passageway.

At that moment a cry of "Johan" rose from the lower part of the lane,

and Keith had to come back once more to look.

"There's my mumsey now," said Johan philosophically, pointing to an open

window on the ground floor of the corner house. With that he slouched

off in a manner that Keith half envied and half resented.

XXIII

The sudden emergence of Johan had filled Keith's heart with a new hope.

Here was a possible playmate at last. The fact that his father was a

_vaktmästare_ like Keith's ought to settle all paternal opposition, the

boy thought. But to his great surprise, he found this not to be

the case.

A severe cross-examination followed his return home. In the midst of it,

Keith made a grievous strategic mistake, lured on by his insatiable

curiosity about strange words.

"Why does Johan call his mamma 'mumsey' and his papa 'popsey,'" he asked

unexpectedly. "It sounds funny."

"Because he does not know any better," his mother rejoined with

unmistakable disapproval. "It doesn't sound nice, and it isn't nice."

"But his papa and mamma don't care," Keith objected.

"That's the worst of it," said the mother. "It shows they are not very

nice people, and I wish to talk to your father before you can play with

Johan any more."

"I have heard of them," the grandmother piped up, making them both turn

towards her, one hopefully and the other doubtfully.

The grandmother never left the kitchen. She walked from the sofa to the

big foot-stool, from the foot-stool to the table by the window, and from

the table back to the sofa. Sometimes she would not be seen talking to

another person for days. And yet she had a miraculous way of surprising

the rest of the family with pieces of gossip picked out of the air, one

might think. There was apparently not a person in the neighbourhood of

whom she had not heard, and about whom she could not give some more or

less intimate piece of information. They were all perfect strangers to

her, but she followed their lives with as much keenness for minute

details as if they had been her nearest kin or dear friends.

"She was a cook in the house of the man whose office Gustafsson works

in," the grandmother went on. "He used to do odd jobs for the family,

cutting wood and such things, and in that way he met her in the kitchen,

and one fine day they decided to get married. She is older than him, and

I guess it was her last chance. But the family was crazy about her, and

when they heard of it, they gave him the place of attendant in the

office downstairs and the two rooms back of the office to live in. He

was just a peasant boy, and she reads the Bible all day and goes to

prayer-meeting at night."

"How do you know all that," wondered Keith's mother, having learned by

this time that the old woman's gossip was generally well founded

on truth.

"Oh," the grandmother said with a queer smile particular to such

occasions, "a little bird sang it to me."

"I think they must be rather low people," Keith's mother concluded.

"Perhaps," the grandmother said, "but they have plenty of religion at

least, and I don't think the boy can do much harm to Keith."

Keith ran up to the grandmother and kissed her impulsively.

That night there was a great family council. Keith's father was told

about Johan and the Gustafssons.

"I think they are about as good as ourselves," was his verdict, given in

a tone suggesting contempt for his own position rather than respect for

that of Johan's father. "But Keith has his toys, and that ought to be

enough for him."

"It _is_ rather lonely for him," the mother rejoined, "and he should get

out a little, I suppose, but I hate to have him playing about the

streets, and I fear Johan's manners are not very good."

"The best thing is to send him to school," said the father.

"What are you talking of, Carl," the mother cried. "The idea--when he is

barely five!"

"He knows more about the letters than I did when I began school at

seven," the father came back unperturbed.

"I don't think it would be very bad for him to play a little with Johan

now and then," said the mother evasively, bending down to kiss Keith,

who had snuggled up to her during the preceding talk. Then she put her

hand through his waves of almost flaxen hair, bent his head slightly

backward, looked straight into his eyes, and asked:

"You don't want to leave me, do you?"

"No," said Keith, hugging her passionately, "but I think I should like

to go to school."

The idea carried no distinct image to his mind, and he felt a little

timid toward all those unknown possibilities implied by the word school,

but this slight feeling of hesitation was swamped by a longing so

restless and so irresistible that it sent tears to his eyes, although he

could not tell himself what it was he longed for.

XXIV

It was true that Keith knew a good deal for his age. In fact, he had

mastered the whole alphabet and was making good progress in spelling

under his mother's guidance. He was eager and quick to learn. Generally

his interest was rather fitful, but along this one line it showed no

wavering. It was as if the boy had known that the art of reading would

offer him an escape of some sort.

He might have advanced still more rapidly if his mother had been more

steady in her teaching. She was very proud of him, and she spoke of

reading and studying as if there were nothing finer in the world.

"No better burden bears any man than much wisdom," she quoted one day

from the old Eddas--probably without knowing the source. "I know, if any

one does, what lack of money means, but I want you rather to have

learning than wealth. Then, when the whole world is listening to you

with bated breath, I shall walk across North Bridge resting on your arm,

and I shall be repaid for all that my own life has not brought me. We

shall walk arm in arm, you and I, at four o'clock, when the King goes

for a walk, too, and all Stockholm is there to see.... Will you do

that, Keith?"

"Of course," he cried, his eyes shining.

But sometimes she was helpless in the grip of one of her depressed

moods, and then days might go by without a lesson. Far from being made

happy by that respite, he would plead with her to be taught "one more

little letter," and finally she would bring down the book from the

hanging book shelf on the wall back of her easy chair. There stood the

a-b-c book she had bought for him, and her favourite hymn-book, and the

New Testament given to the father when he left school to begin earning

his own living, and the miniature copy of Luther's catechism presented

to him at the time of his confirmation. There, too, rested the big Bible

which Keith's mother treasured as much as her wedding ring and the

bureau that was her chief wedding present. It was a gift from her father

when she was confirmed, and on its fly-leaf he had written:

"Belongs to Anna Margareta Carlsson."

It was this Bible rather than the a-b-c book that became the principal

means of instruction. Keith loved it, and he could not have been much

more than three years old when he first began to pore over its quaint

old illustrations. The first of these showed an old man with a long

beard and a trailing white garment floating over a sheet of water out of

which rose two ragged pieces of rock. At one corner a pallid sun emerged

out of the fleeing mists, while, at the opposite corner, a tiny moon

crescent seemed about to disappear beneath the stilled waters.

"Who is that," asked Keith not once, but many times.

"That is God creating the world," explained his mother.

"But I don't see the world."

"It is just coming out," she said, pointing to the rocks.

"Who's God," was Keith's next question as a rule.

"He is the father of the whole universe," the mother said reverently.

"Papa's too," asked the boy once, and seeing his mother nod assent, he

cried jubilantly:

"Then he must be my grandfather, whose portrait you haven't got!"

More frequently he stopped short as soon as he heard about the universal

fatherhood. That was grown-up talk to him, and like much else, it

carried no meaning to his mind. Nor did he waste much thought on it

after having asked once if he could see God and been told that no man

could do that and live. His mind was occupied with food and clothes and

toys and people and things. What could never be seen was easily

dismissed--much more easily than the spook that one of the servant girls

insisted on having seen, thus making Keith's father so angry that he

nearly discharged her on the spot. And from that first picture in the

Bible the boy turned impatiently to another further on, where a small

boy with a sword almost as big as himself was cutting the head off a man

much taller than Keith's father. And at the top of each page appeared

big black letters which he could recognize almost as easily as those in

the a-b-c book, although they were differently shaped and much more

pretty to look at.

To Keith this opening up of a new world was exclusively pleasant at

first, and so it was to his mother, but other people seemed to be

troubled by it at times. One day his free-spoken aunt was visiting with

them, and, as usual, disagreeing with Keith's mother, who evidently felt

one of her dark spells approaching. Wishing to express her disagreement

at some particular point quite forcibly, but wishing also to keep the

listening boy from enriching his vocabulary with a term of doubtful

desirability, she took the precaution to spell out the too

picturesque word:

"R-o-t!" Just then she caught a gleam of aroused interest in Keith's

eyes, and to make assurance doubly sure, she hastened to add:

"Says rod!"

"No," Keith objected promptly. "It says rot, and I want to know what it

means."

"I knew that small pigs also have ears, but I didn't know they could

spell," was her amused comment, uttered in a tone that touched something

in Keith's inside most pleasantly. Then, however, she went on in a

manner grown quite serious:

"You had better send him to school, Anna."

"Yes," replied the mother to Keith's intense surprise, "Carl and I have

been talking it over and practically decided to do so. He certainly

needs some better guidance than he gets from his poor, good-for-nothing

mother."

"Good-for-nothing fiddlesticks!" sputtered the aunt. "You'll make me say

something much worse than rot. Anna, if you keep talking like that when

the boy hears it."

Keith had heard, but his mind was absorbed by the new idea.

"Well," said his mother, "I cannot take care of him properly. He is

running down to that Gustafsson boy all time and most of the time I

can't get him home again except by going for him."

"Johan's mother said yesterday that I hadn't been there half an hour

when you called for me," Keith broke in. "And then she said that I had

better not come back if you don't think Johan good enough for to

play with."

"I don't say we are better than anybody else," said the mother,

addressing herself to the aunt rather than to Keith. "But I don't know

what he is doing when he is down there, and Johan seems such a clod that

I can't see why Keith wants to play with him."

"Why can't Johan come up here," asked Keith.

"Because ...," said his mother, and got no further.

"Yes," the aunt declared in a tone of absolute finality, "you must send

him to school."

No sooner had the aunt taken her leave than Keith assailed his mother

with excited demands for further information. She took his head between

her both hands and looked at him as if she would never see him again.

"Only five," she said at last, "and already he wants to get away. A few

years more--a few short years--and you will be gone for good,

I suppose."

"Oh, mamma," he protested, "you know that I shall never leave you!"

"No, never entirely," she cried, kissing him fervently. "Promise me you

won't, Keith!"

He promised, and then he wanted to know what they did in school. But she

began to talk about difficulties and dangers and temptations and all

sorts of things he couldn't grasp. She spoke with intense feeling, and

as always when she was deeply moved, his whole being was set vibrating

in tune with her mood. His cheeks flushed, his throat choked, his eyes

brimmed over with tears, and at last he began to wonder whether he had

not better stay right where he was. Her eyes were dim with tears, too,

and once more she took his head between her hands and looked an endless

time before she said:

"Now you are beginning life in earnest, Keith!"