hands and looked an endless
time before she said:

"Now you are beginning life in earnest, Keith!"

PART II

I

One day in the early autumn Keith's mother dressed him with unusual care
and kissed him several times before they left the house. Granny had to
be kissed, too, and even Lena came forward to shake hands and say
good-bye. It was a very solemn affair.

Hand in hand Keith and his mother walked clear across the old City, past
Great Church, until they came to a very broad lane at the foot of which
was a square with a statue in it. At the other end of the square lay a
very large, red building.

"That's the House of Knights where all the nobility hang up their
coats-of-arms," said the mother.

But Keith was too excited to ask any questions at that moment.

They entered a house much finer and neater than their own and stopped in
front of a door on the second floor. A hubbub of shrill voices could be
heard from within. Keith gripped his mother's hand more firmly.

Then the door was opened by a white-haired lady with spectacles and they
were admitted to a large room, containing a score of little boys and
girls. A dead silence fell on the room as they appeared, and every eye
turned toward Keith, who blushed furiously as was his wont whenever he
found himself observed.

After a brief talk with the teacher, Keith's mother to him:

"This is Aunt Westergren, whom you must obey as you obey me. And now be
a good boy and don't cry."

As the mother tarried by the door for a moment to exchange a last word
with the teacher, and perhaps also to cast one more lingering glance at
the boy, a little girl ran up to Keith, put her right fore-finger on top
of his head and cried out:

"Towhead!"

All the other children giggled. Keith blushed more deeply than ever, but
did not say a word or stir a limb. A moment later the teacher began to
cross-question him about his knowledge of letters and spelling, and he
found it much easier to answer her than to face the children. But, of
course, after a while he was quite at home among them without knowing
how it had happened.

That afternoon his mother came for him. The next morning he had to start
out alone under direct orders from the father, and alone he made his way
home again, his bosom swelling with a sense of wonderful independence.
Years passed before he learned that his mother had watched over him for
days before she was fully convinced of his ability to find the w