The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

“I will,” the boy blurted out with a little catch in his voice.

His pride was broken, and once more those everlasting tears were dimming his eyes.

He felt weak and helpless, but through his dejection broke now and then a sense of pleasant warmth.  His father had asked him to go “for his sake.”

Such a thing had never happened before.

XXI

The class was discreetly preoccupied when Keith showed up as usual next morning.  Only Young Bauer evinced a slight inclination to taunt him, but was curtly hushed up.

During one of the afternoon hours the door of the classroom opened unexpectedly and Keith’s father appeared on the threshold.

“Will you pardon me for just one moment, Sir,” he said to the astonished teacher.  Then, without coming further into the room, he addressed himself to Keith:  “I have had a talk with the Rector and with Lector Booklund.  I have heard all about your behaviour in school, and I warn you now that unless you do better, I shall give you the treatment you deserve.  Bear that in mind.”

Then he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

A couple of the boys snickered.  The teacher rapped sharply on the table with the book he held in his hand.

Keith sat absolutely still with bowed head.  He couldn’t think.  He didn’t dare to think of ever facing one of those other boys again.  And suddenly it occurred to him that his father had looked quite common, like a workman almost, while he stood there at the door, talking across the room to Keith.

But a tiny voice somewhere within himself denied it.

XXII

The term dragged to an end.

Commencement Day was no longer a cause of joyful anticipation.  It had to be borne like many other things.  But it did mark the end.

Keith learned without much heartbreaking that he had got a “C” not merely in Latin, which he expected, but in behaviour as well—­he who all through his school period had never had less than “A” on his personal conduct.

Well, it merely clinched the decision he already had formed.  One could not pass any examination in behaviour.  And after what had happened, the thought of going back to the same classroom in the fall gave him a sensation of outright physical discomfort.  Anything was better than school.

Not even his mother had put in an attendance that day.  He had to walk home by himself, all the other boys being accompanied by pleased or resigned parents.  But it was in keeping with the rest of what he had to go through.

Out of the midst of the shapeless throng of dark thoughts filling his head, a quite irrelevant memory pushed to the front as if in answer to an unspoken question.  It consisted of the words spoken by Aunt Brita: 

“Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning.”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Soul of a Child from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.