s thought demanded of him,
"why in the world has Dally kept me sitting below Davidson who got
nothing but books?"

VII

Keith next day was permitted to have a good look at the five
twenty-crown pieces found in the package handed to him by the Rector.
Their weight and brightness made them delightful to handle, but they
were not "toys for children" his father remarked, and with that remark
they passed out of sight for ever. Once or twice he put timid questions
to his mother, who never answered directly, but reminded him of all the
money his father had spent and was spending on him for food and clothes
and schooling and all sorts of things. Keith almost wished that he had
received some nice books instead, or anything that could make him feel
that he really had got a big glorious reward for something he really had
done. Now the achievement seemed as illusive as the reward.

He tried to reason the case out with himself, and the conclusion at
which he arrived was that his father probably was entitled and
certainly welcome to the money, but that as he, Keith, had earned it and
owned it, something should be said to him about the use of it. And as so
often was the case, it became a question of abstract justice. The value
and possibilities of the money lay beyond his grasp, but the ethics of
its disposal, from his simple childish point of view, seemed too clear
for serious discussion. Once or twice he stole a look at his savings
bank book, which his mother kept among her own papers, but no new entry
appeared on its meagre credit side. By and by he almost lost sight of
the whole incident, engrossed as he was with the experiences of the
current hour, but the memory of it recurred fitfully, and in moments of
dissatisfaction it tended to assume the shape of a grievance, if not a
charge, against the father. From this tendency he fled instinctively to
an idea of money as not worth bothering about. And that idea also helped
when the atmosphere of worry about money matters surrounding his mother
became too intense and depressive.

There was comparatively little of it that summer. His mother was in
better health and spirits than he had seen her for a long time, and she
was as happy as Keith when the father announced that they would have a
summer place of their own on one of the islands in Lake Maelaren,
somewhat farther out than the one where Uncle Laube lived. It was too
far away to have become absorbed by the rapidly growing cit