But Keith had very little pride.  He continued to seek Harald’s company as before, and twice, as they about to part in front of the latter’s house, Keith asked if he couldn’t come up and play for a little while.

“Don’t you understand,” Harald asked the second time, “that my mamma does not think you good enough for me to play with?”

Keith had not thought of it in that way.  He had learned that there were people who looked down on his parents, just as they, in their turn, looked down on the parents of Johan, but the idea that he himself might be regarded equally inferior was entirely new to him.  It was so strange to him that it took him years to grasp it.  And when it came into his mind, he felt as if some one had raised a heavy stick to strike him, and he cowered under the impending blow.

II

Christmas was approaching.

The days grew shorter and shorter, until at last a scant four hours of daylight remained around noon.  Even then a lamp was often needed for reading.

The lead-coloured sky nearly touched the roofs.  The drizzle that filled the air most of the time seemed to enter men’s minds, too, sapping their vigour until life became a burden.  Meeting on the streets, they would cry in irritable tones: 

“When will the snow come?”

It was always a tedious time for Keith.  The incident with Harald made it worse this year.  Except for the daily attendance at school, he was virtually a prisoner.  Johan was to be seen only from the window, whence Keith enviously watched him prowling about the lane, his hands buried in the side-pockets of an old coat much too long—­apparently inherited from someone else—­and his shoulders hunched as if fore-destined to support loads of wood like those his father used to carry.  If no one was in the living-room, Keith might shout a greeting to his playmate below, but it was not much fun, and Johan had a contemptuous way of asking why he did not come out and play.

Yet the season was not without its compensations.  Stores of every kind were laid in to last through the winter.  One might have thought that a severance of communications with the outside world was feared.  Keith marvelled at the magnificence of it, and once in a while he asked why it had to be done.  The answers were unsatisfactory.  The main reason was that it had always been done, but he gathered also that, while it was perfectly respectable to live from day to day during the summer, to do so during the winter would be a distinct proof of social and economic inferiority.

The fire wood came first—­a mighty load of birch logs piled along the house front in the lane.  Two men were busy all day with saw and ax, reducing those logs into pieces matching the fire-places in the kitchen stove and the two glazed brick ovens in the living-room and the parlour.  Two more men piled the pieces into huge sacks and staggered with those on their backs up the five flights of stairs to the top garret under the peak of the house, which belonged to the Wellanders.