Always his thoughts returned to the same point:  the strangeness of the fact that those boys would never appear again.  At no moment, however, did it occur to him that the same thing might have happened to himself—­or might happen some time in the future.  He was Keith Wellander, to whom such things never happened.

He was nearly home when he suddenly stopped in the middle of East Long Street and said to himself: 

“Now I suppose I’ll never get leave to go skating again.”

XXI

Among other new duties that accompanied Keith’s entrance into the fourth grade was church-going.  Until then he had known little about public worship beyond what he observed during two or three attendances of Yule Matins, that was almost like going to a party.  The rule of the school was that all pupils in the higher grades who not going to church with their parents elsewhere must attend services with their respective classes every other Sunday at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

Judging by the number of boys who turned up, the percentage of church-goers among the parents must have been very small.  Keith’s father went to communion once a year.  That was all.  The mother went a little oftener, but as a rule something else turned up about the time she ought to start, and so she stayed home and read a chapter in some Lutheran postil instead.  Keith thought little of that kind of books.  He had tried them and found them dull beyond endurance.

“Do you really like reading that stuff,” he said to his mother one Sunday.

“Keith!” she protested sternly.  Then she continued more mildly:  “It is not a question of like or dislike, my boy, but of saving your soul by humbling it before the Lord.”

“Can you do that by reading,” asked Keith innocently.

“N-no ... not exactly,” his mother hesitated.  But you can....  Oh, I know I ought to be in church instead of sitting here, but I am such a weak vessel, and I am sure that the Lord will understand and forgive me.”

“Well, then you don’t need to worry, mamma,” said Keith consolingly, stirred as always by the appearance of an emotional note in her voice.

“We should always worry,” she rejoined very gently, “because we are all sinners and we have a chance only by His mercy.  But I don’t believe in a hell, whatever they say, and I don’t want you, Keith, to pay any attention to anything of that kind they may teach you.”

“But why do they teach it then,” asked Keith, his logic alert.

“Because ... it’s a long story, and you will understand it some day.  Now I want to finish my chapter, or I won’t be able to do so before dinner is ready.”

Keith would have liked to ask more, but what concerned him was the apparent contradiction in his mother’s words rather than the subject of religion itself.  His main impression of religion so far was that it was something very tedious to which grown-up people submitted for some mysterious reason never really revealed to children.  And this impression was abundantly confirmed by his subsequent experiences in the prudishly ugly precincts of St. Mary Magdalene.