ring
attention. But his ear was so poor that for a while it looked as if he
would not even be admitted to the singing practices. His persistence
prevailed in the end, and when he and Murray stood side by side, using
the same song-book while practicing some brave old student song, he felt
as much happiness as ever fell to his share in those days.

They had common hours in gymnastics, too, but they were compulsory three
times a week, and Murray took them as a duty rather than a pleasure.
Keith them on the whole, and unlike most of the other boys, he preferred
the slow routine of the setting-up exercises to the more athletic
features. While he never consciously realized the cause of that
preference at the time, it would not have been difficult for a fairly
intelligent observer to discover it.

Keith was still one of the smallest boys in the school utterly lacking
any physical superiority, although he was in excellent health and never
had experienced a single one of the ailments that commonly dodge the
steps of childhood. He could not shine in jumping or leaping or
climbing, but in the drill his painstaking attention placed him on a par
with everybody else. It was his one chance of feeling himself the
physical equal of his schoolmates, and it was the only field of common
endeavour outside the lessons where he was not made to feel his own
inferiority.

XIX

The insufficiency of one room as a living place for three persons had
long been evident. Keith was in his twelfth year, and he still slept on
the chaiselongue opposite his father's and mother's bed. He had ceased
to pretend that the corner between the window and his mother's bureau
could possibly be considered a satisfactory "play-room." Then a tenant
who had lived with them quite a while left, and the parlour became
unexpectedly vacant. Keith revelled in the free use of it, and his
mother talked seriously of not renting it again, but the father insisted
that they could not afford to keep it for themselves.

Then Keith's mother had a bright idea. She inserted an advertisement
offering a home and "as good as parental care" to a boy from the
country for the school season. An answer was received, negotiations
progressed favourably, and soon Albert Mendelius, the son of a minister,
was installed in the parlour with understanding that his use of it was
exclusive only at night. In the daytime it was common ground for both
boys, and Keith did his studying in there, but