“Drat that boy!”

Then she burst into open laughter, while Mina rushed ashore and hastily began to dress behind a close screen of undergrowth.

After that Mina did not go in bathing with the children.

Many years later Keith could still visualize the whole scene as if it had happened only a few days ago, while all his efforts to recall the cottage where they lived, or anything else seen that summer, were vain.

VI

In the autumn of that year Keith was sent to a “real” school, selected after much inquiry by his parents as combining a reasonable degree of efficiency and social standing with an equally reasonable cost of tuition.  It was private like the first one, kept by two middle-aged spinster sisters, one of whom was tall, angular and firm, while the other was short, fat and sentimental.  It held about two scores of pupils, most of whom were girls.  These girls ranged in years to the near-marriageable age, while none of the boys was more than eight years old.  Thus the atmosphere was distinctly feminine, which in the eyes of Keith’s mother marked an added advantage.

The only thing that excited Keith about the new school was that it took him farther from home than he had ever been allowed to wander unattended before, into a hitherto unexplored region of the city known as the South End.  It was a poor man’s neighbourhood on the whole, but of that Keith knew nothing at the time.  The school occupied a few large and sunny rooms in the rear part of a sprawling old stone structure built like a palace around an enormous cobble-stoned courtyard, with a tall arched gateway providing entrance from the street under the front part of the house.  For a while it was quite impressive and a little disturbing, but like everything else it soon became familiar and commonplace.

To get there from his own part of town, Keith had to cross the Sluice—­a lock enabling vessels to pass safely from Lake Maelaren to the salt waters of the Bay in spite of the frequently sharp difference of level.  At either end of the lock was a drawbridge in two sections raised from the centre to let the larger vessels through.  The place was full of interesting sights, and Keith loved in particular to press right up against the edge of the raised bridge as some steamer or small sailing vessel glided leisurely in or out of the ever shifting waters of the lock.

At first it never occurred to him that he might walk around by the other bridge when the one right in his way happened to be open, and so he was late at school several times in quick succession.  The first time he was warned.  The second he was placed in a corner of the room with his face to the wall and kept there for about one quarter of an hour.  The third time the elder Miss Ahlberg applied a ruler to the finger-tips of his left hand, which she held in a firm grasp within one of her own.