"Murray wouldn't smoke," he ventured after another pause.

"Him up there, you mean," inquired Johan with a gesture of his thumb
toward the house across the lane, Of course, he wouldn't. He's a miss."

"He is not," Keith cried passionately.

"And he's a stiff, too," Johan went on without any particular display of
feeling. "And you're a fool, that's all."

There was a coolness between them.

"I think mamma is waiting for me," remarked Keith as he started to walk
off.

"Of course she is waiting for her baby," Johan retorted with a leer.

Keith stopped and thought. Murray would fight for a thing like that, he
said to himself. Or would he? Without having reached a decision Keith
made for his own house, trying to look as if Johan didn't exist.

"He has no real use for you, and you'll find it out," was Johan's
parting shot.

Keith was suddenly struck with the coarseness of Johan's manners and
speech. He was making comparisons in his mind, and as a result the image
of Murray seemed more resplendent than ever.

XVIII

"Did you ever try to smoke," he asked Murray next morning.

"No," was the disdainful reply. "I know papa wouldn't like it, and it's
nasty anyhow."

"How do you know," wondered Keith.

"Because I know," rejoined Murray. It was a way he had, and it always
settled the matter. A cold, tired look would appear on his face if Keith
tried to press a subject after such an answer, and before that look
Keith quailed.

His state was hopeless. He accepted as law whatever his friend said or
did. And although their friendship, such as it was, lasted only two
years, Keith did not take up smoking until he was in camp as a
conscript at the age of twenty.

In school it was the same. And the fact that Murray attended to his
studies with scrupulous exactness was probably one of the factors that
helped Keith through the grade without any loss of standing as
a scholar.

Like Loth, Murray had mildly artistic leanings, and because he liked to
draw and to sing, Keith, too, had to join in those studies, although
both were elective, and although the singing classes twice a week
consumed one of the two precious lunch hours that otherwise could be
used so profitably for play or study. Keith had neither aptitude nor
interest for draftsmanship, being curiously set toward the written word.
He would have liked to sing well, as he had noticed that boys having a
good voice were always popular and received a lot of flatte