But his father used to say that the only instrument he cared to hear was a drum.

V

His mother’s chief grievance was her health.  She was rarely quite well, and they had a family physician who would appear from time to time without being sent for.  Yet her illness seemed, as a rule, not to prevent her from being about and attending to her household duties.

Once, however, while Keith was still too small to receive clear impressions, she had to keep in bed for a long time and during much of that time she seemed to have forgotten him entirely.  The father was more taciturn and reserved than usual, and even the boy could see that he was worried.  Friends and relatives came and went with a quite uncommon frequency, and all of them spoke to Keith in a strange manner that, although not unpleasant, had a tendency to make him choke.  A hundred times a day he was told that he must keep quiet for his mother’s sake, and that it was no time for boisterous playing—­if he really must play at all.  Most of the time he was in the kitchen, and on a few occasions he was even permitted to stay all by himself in the parlour, where there were all sorts of big books with any number of pictures on the fine oval table standing in front of an old sofa so huge that to crawl up on its seat was almost like going off into another room.

Finally he was taken to the home of Aunt Brita, his father’s married sister, in another part of the town and kept there, a bewildered prisoner in a strange land, until one day his aunt told him that his mother was well and wanted him to come home, but that he would have to be a more than usually good boy for a long time yet, unless he wanted to lose his mother forever.

When, at last, he was home again, his mother pulled him up to herself in the bed, embraced him passionately and sobbed as if it had been a farewell instead of a greeting.  He wept, too, and clung to his mother as if in fright, while she told him that he must always do just what she told him and, above all, not scare her by going off so that she did not know where he was.

The father stood beside the bed watching them.  And as Keith happened to look up once, he saw that his father’s eyes were moist with tears.  The boy could hardly believe it, and a little later he wondered whether he had been mistaken, for his father spoke just then in his sternest tone, and all he said was: 

“Yes, I hope you will behave a little better after this than you have done before.”

Many more weeks went before his mother was herself again.  Even then a difference remained.  She was more given to worry than before and clung to husband and child with a concern that frequently became oppressive.