There were gaps in the stories of his mother and Granny concerning which he never got a direct reply from them, but by degrees he picked up many missing details from other sources.  What he learned in this way indicated merely that they had been very poor at times, and poverty had forced them to earn a living by work that was quite honest and decent, but not “socially respectable.”  At one time, before her daughter was old enough to assume a share of the burden, Granny had actually had to fall back on the coarsest and humblest menial work—­scrubbing and washing by the day in strange houses.  Yet she and her daughter appeared throughout that ordeal to have remained on terms of pleasant intimacy with friends of the class to which they regarded themselves as properly belonging.

Another problem never solved for Keith was what kind of schooling his mother had had.  Her own failure to tell suggested that it must have been of the slightest.  Yet Keith never thought of her as ignorant.  She had a bright, eager mind that, when not clouded, acted as a goad on his own.  It was she who taught him to read and filled him with an awe for books and book-learning that was, perhaps, not entirely wholesome.  She herself read eagerly, though fitfully, her interest in all such matters varying greatly with her mood and condition.  Her day-dreaming was to a large extent directed toward matters literary and artistic.  Sometimes, when she had read some novel with a markedly sentimental appeal, she talked vaguely of old ambitions to write, but as a rule it was her ignorance of music that she deplored.  In the meantime her lace-making and her embroidery proved an artistic sense not wholly confined to dreams.  She was always busy with some work of that kind, but her longings went far beyond it, and it happened more than once that she let her work drop in her lap while she looked at Keith with an expression he could not understand.

“If only I had had your chance in life,” she exclaimed on one occasion of that kind.

“What do you mean,” asked the boy, snuggling close to her.

“I mean that you will study and be able to do things,” she answered, bending down to kiss him.

At that very moment the father entered and heard what she said.

“Nonsense,” he broke in.  “The boy is going to learn a trade, and I think we’ll ask Uncle Granstedt to make a carpenter of him.”

To Keith it was all meaningless, and his mother said nothing at the time, but a slight stiffening of her face warned him that his father’s remark pointed in a direction not held desirable by her.  And from that sign the boy took his cue.

XIV

The outside door stood open and no one was in the kitchen but Granny.  The temptation to explore was irresistible.

“When the cat’s away, the rats dance on the tray,” the old grandmother muttered as if to herself.