“I mean just what I said,” insisted Oscar a little more quietly after a while.  “Anything that has to do with my mother is sweet to my father, I tell you.  And that is love.  If you don’t know it, you don’t know what love is either.”

“But why,” demanded Keith, his mind still so full of the disturbing image called forth by Oscar that his jaws moved uneasily as if he had taken into his mouth something unpalatable.

“Because,” Oscar hesitated ... “because it is that way.”

Keith left shortly afterwards to think it over in solitude.  It was probably the first time the word love had been presented to him as anything but a commonplace term for laudable but commonplace feelings.  He puzzled over it, but to little purpose, and for some reason he thought it useless or unwise to ask his mother for information.

VIII

The third grade proved merely a continuation of the second.  Little had changed over summer.  A few boys had been dropped behind and a few others overtaken.  That affected the bottom of the class, but not the top.  Dally remained their principal, and when he welcomed them back at the opening of the fall term, Keith waited excitedly for the distribution of places.  Few changes were made however.  Davidson remained primus as before, with Keith next.  Then came Runge and Blomberg as before.  For a day or two Keith swung violently between fits of rebellion and deep depression.  It seemed almost incredible that he could have received the highest prize bestowed on any pupil in the school.

Then the routine of instruction and study seized him.  New text-books were acquired, not without some grumbling on his father’s part.  New interests were stirring and, as usual, cleverly nursed by Dally.  Above all, the magnetic power of the teacher asserted itself once more, until Keith felt that the only thing really worth while in life was to please him.

Algebra was one of the new subjects, and the use of letters instead of figures amused Keith for a while.  But it took no serious hold on his mind.  The whole field of mathematics left him strangely uninterested although he was good at arithmetic.  He thought the problems of Euclid stupid.  Once he had learned how to prove a theorem, it seemed so ridiculously self-evident that he wondered why anybody should bother his brain about it.  There were other boys who could figure out the demonstrations in advance without looking at the book.  Keith tried it once or twice, but failed miserably and gave it up as a worthless and thankless job.  Apparently his brain did not work in that way.  It had to touch real life to be at its best.  History and geography were his favourite subjects, and in those he led the class.  This was openly admitted by Dally himself.