up and play for a little while.

"Don't you understand," Harald asked the second time, "that my mamma
does not think you good enough for me to play with?"

Keith had not thought of it in that way. He had learned that there were
people who looked down on his parents, just as they, in their turn,
looked down on the parents of Johan, but the idea that he himself might
be regarded equally inferior was entirely new to him. It was so strange
to him that it took him years to grasp it. And when it came into his
mind, he felt as if some one had raised a heavy stick to strike him, and
he cowered under the impending blow.

II

Christmas was approaching.

The days grew shorter and shorter, until at last a scant four hours of
daylight remained around noon. Even then a lamp was often needed
for reading.

The lead-coloured sky nearly touched the roofs. The drizzle that filled
the air most of the time seemed to enter men's minds, too, sapping their
vigour until life became a burden. Meeting on the streets, they would
cry in irritable tones:

"When will the snow come?"

It was always a tedious time for Keith. The incident with Harald made it
worse this year. Except for the daily attendance at school, he was
virtually a prisoner. Johan was to be seen only from the window, whence
Keith enviously watched him prowling about the lane, his hands buried in
the side-pockets of an old coat much too long--apparently inherited from
someone else--and his shoulders hunched as if fore-destined to support
loads of wood like those his father used to carry. If no one was in the
living-room, Keith might shout a greeting to his playmate below, but it
was not much fun, and Johan had a contemptuous way of asking why he did
not come out and play.

Yet the season was not without its compensations. Stores of every kind
were laid in to last through the winter. One might have thought that a
severance of communications with the outside world was feared. Keith
marvelled at the magnificence of it, and once in a while he asked why it
had to be done. The answers were unsatisfactory. The main reason was
that it had always been done, but he gathered also that, while it was
perfectly respectable to live from day to day during the summer, to do
so during the winter would be a distinct proof of social and economic
inferiority.

The fire wood came first--a mighty load of birch logs piled along the
house front in the lane. Two men were busy all day with sa