While the mother was serving and Keith was waiting in dumb agony, it flashed through his mind that Uncle Granstedt might be eating that kind of soup.  If so, the boy thought, he would rather let himself be killed than made a carpenter.

As the turn came to his own plate, Keith tried to catch his mother’s eye with a signalled appeal to put in as little as possible, but she was talking to her husband and not noticing the boy at all.  And so, at last, he found himself confronted with a plate filled to the brim.

The first few spoonfuls went down without much resistance, chiefly because he confined himself to the fluid part of the soup.  Then it seemed of a sudden as if one more mouthful would choke him, and his eating became a mere dallying with his spoon.

“Go on and finish your soup,” the father urged sternly.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I have eaten all I can.”

“That does not matter,” rejoined his father.  “One must always finish what is on one’s plate.”

“But I don’t like it,” Keith blurted out in a moment of desperation—­which was unfortunate.

“Children have no likings of their own,” said the father, putting down his spoon.  “They must like what their parents give them.  And you will finish that soup—­if I have to feed you myself to make you do it.”

Two more spoonfuls went down by an heroic effort.  Then Keith burst into tears, and his father’s face grew still darker as he asked scornfully: 

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

Keith did not care at that moment.  In fact, he thought that if girls had a right to cry, he would rather be one.

His mother was trying to coax him with kind words, and he actually raised the filled spoon to his lips once more, but the sensation within him was such that he let it drop again with a splash.  That was the crowning offence, and the feeding process began at once.  His father took him by the neck with one hand and administered the spoon with the other.  It was done firmly and perhaps harshly, but in such a manner that the boy was not hurt.

Keith cried and coughed and swallowed—­and in the midst of that ordeal he noticed the wonderful softness of his father’s hands.  But his heart was full of bitter resentment, and he wished that he could grow up on the spot.

What the end might have been is hard to tell, had not a slight commotion been heard from the kitchen at that juncture.

“There is mother now,” said the father, letting go his hold on Keith’s neck.  “Wipe your eyes and try to act like a boy.  Some day we’ll put you into skirts.”

Keith did not care.  He knew now that he would not have to eat the rest of the soup.  That was the one thing in the world that seemed to matter to him.  His tears ceased.  But now his body was shaken by a convulsive sob.  On the whole his mood was one of hopeless resignation.

XVIII