nd his voice set the boy's heart throbbing like
an engine.

"I will," replied Keith. "But I could pass those examinations without
looking at the book."

"The more shame for you, then, to let yourself be plucked," was his
father's concluding remark, but even that was uttered without a
suggestion of bitterness.

XI

The summer was spent on the mainland opposite the island where they used
to live. He had practically no companionship except that of his mother.
It was very dull, but for the first time he seemed to need solitude. He
had brought out all his schoolbooks, and he really did a good deal of
studying, especially of Latin, which he knew was his weakest point.

At first he felt a slight grudge against the mother. She had
disappointed him for one thing, and there was an inclination besides to
hold her responsible for his misfortune. By degrees, however, he began
to see his own part in its true light, and he wondered how he could have
been such a blind fool. It was this understanding that brought him
comparative peace and enabled him to work. He had been so harassed by
the question of guilt in regard to actions which his own mind would
never have classed as wrong that the sense of facing punishment clearly
deserved came as a genuine relief.

The monotony of the season was only broken by a visit to the summer home
of Aunt Agda at Laurel Grove, where he stayed a whole week and made a
lot of friends. She had served with the Wellanders as a nurse girl when
Keith was only a baby. Then she was plain Agda, and Keith's mother often
spoke of how crazy she had been about him. Then she disappeared, and
when the Wellanders next heard of her, she was the wife of a well-to-do
retired merchant, to whom she had borne three children while she was
merely a servant and his first wife still lived. Keith had often
overheard his parents speak of Agda's phenomenal rise with ironic
smiles, but he didn't care for anything except her continued inclination
to spoil him.

There was a lot of children at Laurel Grove, boys and girls, and most
of them matched Keith in age. They took him in, and in that one week he
had a glimpse of the kind of life he would have liked to live. There was
in particular one boy, Arnold Kruse, for whom Keith formed a warm
attachment. This feeling was additionally cemented by Arnold's choice of
Keith as a confidant. Arnold was in love with the prettiest girl in the
place, Gurlie Norlin, and so was every other