“Oh, because ...” said his mother wearily, “because your grandmother has always been peculiar in that way when she knew she was being wronged.  ‘What is the use?’ she says.  And then word came that her father had gone bankrupt and had died soon after.  No one seemed to pay the least attention to her.  She stayed where she was, and she couldn’t work any harder than she had done all the time.  But when she was to be confirmed, and had to go to church every week with all the other children of her own age, she was the poorest of them all, both in fact and in appearance, she didn’t have one person in the world to whom she could turn.  She has told me that she used to lie awake nights crying and thinking of running away, but she couldn’t make up her mind to that either.”

She stopped, and Keith waited in vain for the rest of the story.

“And then,” he urged.

“Oh, then she came to Stockholm and married your grandfather—­my papa, you know.  And now Lena is waiting for me to tell her what we are to have for dinner.”

Keith went back to his own corner for a while.  Then he made a dash for the kitchen, where he found Granny seated in her usual place peeling potatoes.  Having placed a smaller foot-stool beside the large one in which she was seated, he got up on it so that he could put both arms about her neck.  Pressing his own soft cheek against hers, he asked brokenly: 

“Are you very unhappy, Granny?”

“No,” she answered placidly, “not when you are willing to give me a kiss.”

“All right,” he said without enthusiasm as he complied with her request.  At the same time he recalled suddenly that he had not played a single game with his tin soldiers that whole morning.

XII

The boy had a logical mind.  He knew that Granny’s story had not been finished, and he wanted all of it.  At the first opportune moment he asked his mother: 

“Was Granny a little girl when she came to Stockholm?”

“No,” said his mother unsuspectingly, “she was already a young woman.”

“What did she do before?”

“I told you,” the mother replied, now on her guard.

“You told me what she did as a little girl, but not afterwards.  I want to know.”

“Oh, she worked, I suppose.”

There was evidently nothing more to be had in that direction.

“And what did she do in Stockholm,” Keith pushed on.

“She married your grandfather, as I told you, and then I was born.”

“What was he?”

The mother remained silent for a good long while, and Keith repeated his question, not yet having learned that unanswered questions generally are unwelcome questions.

“He was a vaktmaestare,” she said finally, and Keith knew that, for some reason, she found the word unpleasant.

The boy reflected a while before he observed: