m occupied all the rest of that wall except a corner by the window,
where stood his mother's high-backed easy chair, with the little
work-table beside it and a hassock in front of it. To that chair she
would retire whenever her household duties permitted, and thither Keith
would be drawn even more powerfully than to his own "play-room" at the
opposite corner--especially when his mother seemed in a happy mood.
There he would kneel on the hassock, with his head in her lap, and if he
could think of nothing else, he would say:

"Tell me about the time you were in London."

IV

While still in her early twenties, Keith's mother had spent two years
with an English family living in Sweden. She always described her
position as that of "lady companion" to the mistress of the house. As a
little boy, Keith did not know enough to ask any embarrassing questions.
Having learned more of life, he began to suspect that his mother's place
might have been little better than that of a servant, and the thought of
it made his soul shrink and wither.

When the family moved back to England, Keith's mother went along and
spent a whole year in London. It was her great adventure, the phase of
her past of which she spoke most eagerly and lovingly. She had formed a
passionate liking for the English language, of which she had picked up a
good deal, as well as for English character and English manners. She
never tired of telling about the great city of London, and Keith never
tired of listening.

"I was so homesick when I first got there," she would say, "that I cried
day and night. Then, one night, I heard a cat mewing on the roof outside
my window. It was the first Swedish sound I had heard since I came to
England, and after that I felt much better."

"Why didn't you stay," asked Keith.

"Because then there would have been no little Keith," she explained, her
face lighting up with the kind of grown-up smile that always provoked
and perplexed the boy.

"Are there no boys in England," he persisted.

"Yes, plenty of them, and fine ones at that. But I wanted no one but
you, and you were here, and so I had to come back to get you."

"Here," he repeated. "Where here?"

"In Sweden, of course," his mother rejoined, and then she started
hurriedly to describe the wonders of London shopping.

"But why did you go at all," he interrupted after listening a while to
what seemed less interesting to him than certain other points. "I might
have bee