One afternoon, however, he appeared just as Keith and his mother were to sit for dinner.  It put her in a flutter and she couldn’t get an additional cover laid quick enough.

“I heard that mother was coming,” he remarked as he seated himself at the table.

Instantly Keith’s mother shot an apprehensive glance at the boy and exclaimed: 

“Please try to be a real nice boy now, so that your grandmother does not get a bad impression of you.”  Then she added, turning to her husband:  “She never says anything, but she always looks as if I spoiled Keith hopelessly.”

“Well,” the father rejoined thoughtfully, “she brought up four children of her own without anybody else to help her, and there was not one among us who dared to disregard her slightest word.”

“How about Henrik,” the mother suggested a little tartly.

“Yes, the one spared is the one spoiled,” admitted the father with a sigh.  “He was the youngest, and while he was licked like all of us, her hand never seemed quite as firm with him as with the rest.  The worst thing parents can do to children is to let them have their own will.”

Keith was listening with one ear only.  His thoughts were on Uncle Henrik, who would put in an unheralded appearance now and then, always when the father was away and always to the consternation of the whole household.  Although hustled out of the kitchen as soon as the unbidden visitor arrived, Keith had had a good look at him several times and had also overheard the parents discussing him.  He was still comparatively young.  Yet he looked like animated waste matter.  His face seemed to hang on him.  His mouth was loose and void of expression.  His eyes were bleared and ever on the move.  He spoke mostly in a toneless drawl, that sometimes turned into a shrill whine, but also at rare intervals could change into a soft, heart-winning purr.  His clothing was poorer and coarser than that of any other person seen by Keith.  Once or twice it seemed to the boy like a repulsive uniform, and he heard his parents speak with mingled disgust and relief of some house or institution that was never fully named.

“No one has a better heart than Henrik,” Keith heard his father say once, “but he has no more spine than a cucumber, and he can’t keep away from drink.”

Then the food was brought in, and Uncle Henrik was forgotten.  As usual, there was a meat course to begin with, and Keith ate what for him was a big portion.  Nor did he get into any trouble beyond having an extra large piece of hard bread put beside his plate by the father and finding the disposal of it rather difficult.

The meat was followed by a large bowl of soup, and the very sight of it made Keith look unhappy—­a fact that did not escape his father.

Keith cared little for soups, while both parents liked them, and he had a particular dislike of soups made on a meat stock, like the one just brought in.  For some reason that Keith might have thought funny under other circumstances, it was called Carpenter Soup, and it contained a lot of rather coarse vegetables.  Among these were green celery and parsnips, both of which filled the boy with an almost morbid disgust.