Then, one fine day, she was all gay and smiling again, and bustled about the home with new eagerness, and told Keith a lot of things about England, and once actually danced across the floor while he was vainly trying to keep step with her.  And the father tried hard to look his grouchiest when he returned home that night, but failed.  And Keith was allowed to stay up quite late, and when he was in bed at last, and almost asleep, he thought he saw his father in the big easy chair by the window, with the mother seated on his lap kissing him.  And just as he was dropping off, he heard, as if in a dream, his father’s voice saying: 

“Look out!  I think the Crown Prince is still awake!”

VI

Some persons said that Keith looked like his father, others that he was the very image of his mother.

“He has my light hair and Carl’s brown eyes,” said his mother often when that topic was under discussion, and saying it seemed to make her happy.

“As a baby he was so pretty that people would stop us on the street to ask whose child he was,” Granny might put in, if she happened to be within hearing.  Then she would add with a glance at Keith:  “But that is all gone now.”

Keith himself never gave much thought to his looks, but any comparison with his mother struck him as quite foolish.

He liked to look at her, especially at her hair, which was very plentiful and in colour like beaten copper with glints of gold in it.  Her skin was very fair and soft as the softest velvet.  Her eyes were blue, and in bright moments they had the softness of the sky of a Swedish summer night.  But when the clouds of depression closed in upon her, they grew pale and light less and disturbingly furtive, so that Keith’s glance found it hard to meet them.

Her gaiety sparkled when she was herself, and she had a passionate love of everything that was bright and pleasant.  Once she had always been that way and at times she would tell Keith what a wonderful time she had as a girl, and how she used to be the centre and inspiration of every social gathering in which she took part.  She had a quick mind, too, and a heart full of impulsive generosity.  But from one extreme she would go to another, so that, when the dark moments came, she would even regret kindnesses conferred while the sun was still shining.  In such moments she would sometimes speak to the boy of her ailment as if he were in some mysterious way responsible for it.

Yet she loved the boy to distraction and became filled with unreasoning anxiety the moment he was out of sight.  Her attitude toward her husband was the same.  He could never leave the home or return to it without being kissed.  The moment he was outside the kitchen door, she hastened to the window and leaned out of it so that she might watch him until he vanished about the corner at the head of the lane.  And there she generally lay waiting for him when he came home.  If he was late, which happened almost every day, she would be the victim of a thousand fears as she made more and more frequent trips between the kitchen and the living-room window.  When he finally came, she acted as if she had not seen him for months while he pretended to be more or less bored by her attentions.