ght up the four of us."

He was evidently in high good-humour and did what Keith had never seen
him do before when no company was present. He got out a cigar from one
of the little drawers in the upper part of mamma's bureau and sat down
at the still covered dining table to smoke it. This made Keith feel
almost as if they were having a party, and soon he sneaked out of his
corner and joined the parents at the table. First he stood hesitatingly
beside his mother, but little by little he edged over to the father
until he actually was leaning against the latter's knee without being
rebuffed. The father even put his hand on Keith's head, and the soup
episode became very distant and dim.

"She used to lick us mercilessly," the father said as if speaking
chiefly to himself, and as he spoke there was a reminiscent smile on his
face and not a trace of resentment in his voice. "But she was absolutely
just about it--so just that she used to lick all four of us whenever one
had earned it. That was to keep the rest from thinking themselves any
better, she said, and also because she felt sure that all of us had
deserved it, although she had not happened to find it out."

"I think it hard and unjust," Keith's mother protested. "And I don't
believe in beating children all the time."

"Those were hard days," the father mused on, "and everybody did it, and
children seemed to know their place better then. I don't think we
suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make
us think less of mother. She had her hands full, too, and not much time
to think of nice distinctions. We were all small when father died, and
Henrik was just a baby. There was no one but her to look after us, and
how she did it, God only knows. But I have never heard her speak one
word of complaint, and she always managed. Sometimes there was little
enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you
herself, but she always had something for us. Then we had to go to work
just as soon as we could. I was thirteen when I began to add my share to
the common heap."

"Did you go to school," Keith ventured, having recently overheard some
talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

"I did," the father replied, "but not long. I wanted to study, and my
teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me
free admission to the higher school. But mother wouldn't listen. And I
suppose it was n