Two men, also in their shirt-sleeves, were busy at the desks, dusting them and arranging the things on top of them.  And the father quickly went to work in the same way.

It seemed interesting to Keith, who would have liked to try his hand at it.  But it also disconcerting for some reason he could not explain and for a while he watched the father as if unwilling to believe his own eyes.  Somehow it did not tally with certain notions formed in Keith’s head on the night when the church was burning.  At last he up to his father and asked: 

“Is this where you always work?”

“No,” was the answer given with a peculiar grimness.  “This is for the officials.”

“What are they?”

“Oh, tellers and cashiers and bookkeepers.”

Keith noted the words for future inquiries.  For the moment they meant nothing to him.

“Why are you not here too,” he persisted.

“Because I am only an attendant—­a mere vaktmaestare.  That is a fact you had better fix in your mind once for all, my boy.”

“Is that your little boy, Wellander,” one of the other men called out at that moment.  “Let us have a look at him.”

Hand-shakings and head-pattings followed as Keith was presented to “Uncle” This and “Uncle” That.  He didn’t object and he didn’t care.  They looked nice enough, and their talk was friendly, but somehow he felt that his parents did not care for them.  Some of the glamour had left the place.  In spite of its magnificence, he did not like it, although he was glad to have seen it.

Discovering a wastepaper basket full of envelopes with brightly coloured marks on them, he regained his interest a little.  He knew those marks for stamps and they had pictures on them which attracted him very much.  So he made a bee-line for the basket and proceeded to pick out what he liked best.

“Have you forgotten what I told you,” he heard his father shout to him.

“They have been thrown away,” he said going toward the father.

“That is neither here nor there,” was the sharp answer he got.  “You know they are not yours, and so you must not touch them.  Put them back at once.”

Keith did as he was told, wondering if he really had done anything wrong or if his father merely objected for some reason of his own.

Then he walked around uninterested and forlorn until they were ready to go home again.  The stairway seemed shorter as they descended, but the pillars were tall and thick as before.  And on the way home his father found a little shop open and bought him a few oere’s worth of hard candy.

It was the only time Keith could ever remember his having done such a thing.

XX

The lodger happened to be away when they got home, and the mother had opened the door to the parlour in order to get a little more air and light into the living-room.  After dinner the father went into the parlour to take a nap on the big sofa, while the mother settled down comfortably in her easy chair, a piece of handiwork on her lap as usual.  Keith took up his customary position on the footstool to tell her what he had seen and done during his morning excursion.