n lost while you were away."

"You might," she assented, "but I had to take the risk because I had to
get a name for you and I could never have found the one you have
in Sweden."

"Why not?"

"Because it is English. And it should be pronounced _Keeth_ instead of
_Kite_ as they say here. I found it in a book over there, and I fell in
love with it the moment I saw it, and I made up my mind that if I ever
had a boy, that would be his name."

"_If_ you had a boy," Keith took her up. "But you knew I was here?"

"Of course, I knew," said his mother in the tone that always warned him
that a change of occupation would be in order. "Run along and play in
your own corner now. I must get some work done."

At other times, when the talk didn't drift off into dangerous by-paths,
his mother would tell little anecdotes in English learned from her
former mistress, and generally end up by singing a little song about a
ball--probably one that had something to do with cricket. And Keith
would exultantly repeat the last line, which was the only one he
could remember:

"And then she _popped_, and then she died."

It was the word _popped_ that caught his fancy, partly because it was so
funny in itself, and partly because it had to be uttered with a sort of
explosion on a very high note. As far as his rendering of the rest was
concerned--well, it was early discovered and reluctantly admitted that,
like his father, he could not even sing "Old Man Noah," which is the
simplest melody imaginable to a musical mind in Sweden.

His failure in this respect gave his mother a slight pang every time it
was brought home to her, although she made fun of it and pretended she
didn't care. Music had been her young heart's dream. It was the only art
for which she showed a genuine regard. And two of her pet grievances
were that she didn't have a piano, and that, if she had one, she could
not play on it.

But his father used to say that the only instrument he cared to hear was
a drum.

V

His mother's chief grievance was her health. She was rarely quite well,
and they had a family physician who would appear from time to time
without being sent for. Yet her illness seemed, as a rule, not to
prevent her from being about and attending to her household duties.

Once, however, while Keith was still too small to receive clear
impressions, she had to keep in bed for a long time and during much of
that time she seemed to have forgotten him entirely.