“I think it hard and unjust,” Keith’s mother protested.  “And I don’t believe in beating children all the time.”

“Those were hard days,” the father mused on, “and everybody did it, and children seemed to know their place better then.  I don’t think we suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make us think less of mother.  She had her hands full, too, and not much time to think of nice distinctions.  We were all small when father died, and Henrik was just a baby.  There was no one but her to look after us, and how she did it, God only knows.  But I have never heard her speak one word of complaint, and she always managed.  Sometimes there was little enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you herself, but she always had something for us.  Then we had to go to work just as soon as we could.  I was thirteen when I began to add my share to the common heap.”

“Did you go to school,” Keith ventured, having recently overheard some talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

“I did,” the father replied, “but not long.  I wanted to study, and my teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me free admission to the higher school.  But mother wouldn’t listen.  And I suppose it was not to be.”

“Did you like school,” asked Keith, not having the slightest idea of what a school might be like.

“Yes, I liked all about it but one thing.  There was a big boy who bullied all the rest, and no one cared to fight him.  He went for me the very first day of the term, and when I fought back, he gave me such a licking that I could hardly walk into the schoolroom afterwards.  The next day he asked if I had had enough, and I told him I meant to go on till he had enough.  So we started right in again, and he licked me worse than the day before.  But I just couldn’t give in.  For three whole months we fought every day, and each day I made it harder for him.  And one day I got the upper hand of him at last, and gave it to him until he began to cry and begged for mercy.  Then I let him go, but no sooner had I turned my back on him, than he picked up a small sapling that was lying around and struck me over the head with it.  There was a piece of root standing straight out, and it hit me right on top of my head so that the blood squirted out and I fainted on the spot.  Then he had to leave school, and the last thing I heard of him was that the police had got him for something still worse.”

“Oh, Carl,” the mother cried with a shudder, “you should have complained to the teacher!”

“The teacher was watching us all the time, although I didn’t know it.  He told me afterwards that he would have helped me any time I asked, but that he would have thought less of me for asking.”