The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a stairway in common at the corner where they joined.  Its stairs and landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing.  At the foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a long walk.  Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on its stiff hinges.

The flats on the second and third floors ran straight through from the lane to the rear building, but on the fourth floor, where Keith lived, another family occupied the rooms looking upon the courtyard.  And there lived Jonas, the only other child in the house during Keith’s earliest years.

Jonas’ father was a compositor—­a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad cough.  His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn.  Jonas himself was pale and gawky and shy.

Those two families, living within a few feet of each other and meeting daily on the common landing, had little more intercourse than if they had been parted by miles of desert.  The reserved and slightly eccentric character of the neighbours had something to do with this separation, but social distinctions counted for more.  A compositor was, after all, a mere workman, and Keith felt instinctively that his mother looked with kindly contempt at the more primitive ways of the adjoining household.  Now and then he was permitted to go and play for a little while with Jonas, who was a year older, but the other boy hardly ever entered Keith’s home.  Nor was their playing much of a success.  Jonas was slow-witted and reserved, while alertness and frankness were among Keith’s most characteristic traits.  But differences of temperament accounted only in part for their failure to come together.  Keith felt as if a wall of some kind stood between them, and as if the eyes watching from the other side of that wall were distinctly hostile at times.  It exasperated him as if it had implied terrible injustice, but it was only in moments of extreme boredom he really cared.  At such moments he would also develop a passionate desire for a brother or sister.  He might have wished for a dog or a cat even, but the idea of such a disturbing element in his parental home seemed too preposterous for serious contemplation.  In fact, so foreign was that idea to the home atmosphere, that Keith went through the rest of his life envying other people’s pets without ever giving earnest thought to the acquisition of one for himself.