The end of it was that they laid down together on the floor.  He put his mouth to hers and hugged her just as tightly as he could.  When they had been lying in way for a while, he whispered to her: 

“Isn’t it nice?”

And she dutifully whispered back:  “It is!”

A few minutes later they were playing with his tin soldiers, and soon after Clara’s mother returned to take her away.

During their entire play both doors had remained closed.  Keith was quite sure of that.  He had looked before he started the new game, although he was not aware of trespassing on prohibited territory.

Afterwards he felt rather uneasy.  There was a distinct sense of risk attaching to that game, and he wondered whether Clara might tell her mother.  At the same time the thought of what he had done filled him with inexplicable satisfaction, as if, in some way, he had put something over on the grown-ups.

As for his own mother—­she seemed to be watching him with unusual concern during the next few days, and he could not escape a suspicion that she knew.  Closed doors did not seem to prevent grown-up people from knowing what children did.

At the same time he wondered why he and Clara should not be playing as they had done.  There was really nothing to it.  And the comparisons they had made took no hold of his imagination.  The differences revealed he accepted as he accepted anything that had no direct bearing on his own happiness.

As far as he could recall afterwards, he never saw Clara again.  Nor did he seem to miss her.

X

Summer again.

The incident with Clara was forgotten.  Yet Keith had a sense of being watched a little more closely than usual.  He was rarely permitted to go out alone after his return from school.  And he was scolded if he ever was late in coming home.

There was mystery in the air.  The parents talked together a good deal in a way that made Keith understand they were talking about him and did not want to be overheard.

As soon as school closed the secret became revealed.  He would be sent into the real country for the summer to board with perfect strangers.

“Any children,” was Keith’s first question.  Yes, a couple of sons in the house, and probably one or two more boys from the city, boarders like Keith.

It seemed the thing had been planning for a long time.  The mother said something about the necessity for Keith of going where everything was clean and wholesome—­the air, the food, the people.  The boy knew that she had been worrying about him for some reason he could not guess.

An advertisement in a newspaper had led his mother on the track of what she wanted.  She read it to him—­“a religious family with children of their own would take a few well-behaved boys of good family for the summer months and give them a real home and as good as parental care.”