Granny’s bureau, old-fashioned and clumsy, but made of some native wood that glimmered like gold, was largely devoted to linen ware for bed and table.  At the top it had two small drawers instead of a long, and one of these constituted the first storage place set aside for Keith’s special use.  His impression was that it had always been his, and once he asked his mother if it really had been his before he was born.

“Of course it was,” she said with a sly smile, “but we took the liberty to use it for other purposes until you arrived”

At first glance this seemed quite reasonable to Keith, though nothing to smile at so far as he could see.  Later he became conscious of a vague sense of annoyance.  It would have been more pleasant if no one else had ever used that drawer.

Across the room from Granny’s bureau, in the corner just inside the door to the kitchen, towered the characteristic Swedish oven—­a round column of white glazed bricks, with highly polished brass shutters in front of the small cubical fire-place, where nothing but birchwood was burned.  In the narrow crack between the oven and the wall rested always a birch rod, which was often referred to at critical moments.  A new rod, with brightly coloured feathers attached to the tip of every twig, appeared regularly on Shrove Tuesday and tended slightly to spoil that otherwise glorious day, when large cross buns stuffed with a mixture of crushed almond and sugar were served in hot milk for dinner.  Though the rod was little more than a symbol of family discipline, Keith always disliked its presence as a threat to his dignity if not to his hide.

A double washstand, looking like a document chest in the daytime, the chaiselongue on which Keith slept at night, and the door to the best room occupied all the rest of that wall except a corner by the window, where stood his mother’s high-backed easy chair, with the little work-table beside it and a hassock in front of it.  To that chair she would retire whenever her household duties permitted, and thither Keith would be drawn even more powerfully than to his own “play-room” at the opposite corner—­especially when his mother seemed in a happy mood.  There he would kneel on the hassock, with his head in her lap, and if he could think of nothing else, he would say: 

“Tell me about the time you were in London.”

IV

While still in her early twenties, Keith’s mother had spent two years with an English family living in Sweden.  She always described her position as that of “lady companion” to the mistress of the house.  As a little boy, Keith did not know enough to ask any embarrassing questions.  Having learned more of life, he began to suspect that his mother’s place might have been little better than that of a servant, and the thought of it made his soul shrink and wither.

When the family moved back to England, Keith’s mother went along and spent a whole year in London.  It was her great adventure, the phase of her past of which she spoke most eagerly and lovingly.  She had formed a passionate liking for the English language, of which she had picked up a good deal, as well as for English character and English manners.  She never tired of telling about the great city of London, and Keith never tired of listening.