Soon he could read without any effort whatsoever—­anything.  Reckoning came easy, too, but writing came hard.  It seemed so much easier to take in than to give out in any form.  Grammar gave him no difficulty, because it dealt with words, and words possessed a magic charm that always held him.  Gradually he began to dip into history and geography—­wonderful realms into which his imagination plunged headlong.  He took almost as eagerly to the old stories out of the Bible—­stories of which he had caught more than a glimpse at home—­but the Catechism was like washing in the morning:  it had to be done because higher powers so decreed.

Yes, he learned a good deal for a little boy of his age, but he never knew how it happened.  The school was never quite real to him.  His home was real, and his play at home.  So was his daily walk to and from school with its innumerable opportunities for observation in the raw.  There were people in the streets, and shops along the road, and many different kinds of vessels in the harbour.  There was the guardhouse on the little square halfway to school, kept by a small detachment of soldiers that were relieved every noon and that never belonged to the same regiment two days in succession.  Watching them gave him many suggestions for handling his own tin soldiers in a more business-like fashion.

But at school....  He was never absentminded or unattentive, for that might have brought the quick clutch of the elder Miss Ahlberg’s bony hand into his own supersensitive crop of hair, and most of what was going on had enough interest in itself to prevent his mind from straying far afield.  He knew the names of his fellow pupils.  He played with those of his own age, and he had likes and dislikes, as was natural.  But through it all he moved as through a mist, seeing only the thing immediately at hand, and losing sight of everything the moment he had passed it.  The three years spent in that school seemed to telescope into each other so that soon afterwards he found himself unable to tell if a thing had happened during the first or last of those years.  Nor did the things he remembered have any connection with the school as a rule, and out of all the boys and girls he met there not one remained distinct in his memory as did the figure of Harald from the first school.  When he left the school to go home for the day, he was done with it, and nothing followed him but what was stored in his head.  And that, too, seemed forgotten at the time, to be re-discovered later with a sense of pleasant surprise.

And all that time things were happening to him at home and elsewhere that, as far as importance went, stood in curious contrast to his quickly forgotten experiences at school—­things that burnt themselves into his mind as a part of its permanent contents....

VIII

There was not a private bathroom to be found in Stockholm in those days.  One washed hands and face and neck whenever compelled to, and some people, like Keith’s father, splashed the upper part of their bodies with water every morning regardless of weather and temperature.  Once a week every self-respecting person went to a public bath for a thorough steaming and scrubbing.