She was eager to hear everything and helped him along with questions, and yet there ran through her very eagerness a subtle inner resistance which the boy felt vaguely.  It as if she never really cared for anything concerning him in which she herself had not taken part.

The original glamour had returned to every aspect of his new experience, and he tried excitedly to describe the wonders of the vestibule, the stairway and the big hall.  In the midst of it he paused suddenly and fell to staring into vacancy.

“Was that all,” she asked, puzzled by his silence.

“Lena dusts our rooms, doesn’t she,” was his rather startling counter-question.

“Mostly,” the mother replied with a searching glance at his puckered brows.  “Although I sometimes ...”

“You don’t have to,” the boy broke in.

“No” she admitted, “but then I am sure it is properly done.”

“Is that why papa dusts the tables in the bank?”

A pause followed during which it was the mother’s turn to stand the boy’s intense scrutiny.

“No,” she said at last.  “He does it because it is a part of his work, and a shame it is that he has to.  Scrub-women come in and do the rest of the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the attendants have to take turns doing that part of it.  That’s why your father has to leave so very early in the morning.”

Mother and son lapsed into silence once more.  It was broken by another question from the boy.

“Why couldn’t I take some stamps that had been thrown away?”

“Had your father said anything about it before you took them?”

“He told me not to touch anything.”

“Then you couldn’t because he had told you to leave things alone.  He is so careful in all such matters.  Sometimes he goes a little too far, perhaps, but you can be sure that he means right.  Other people want the stamps, and there is a lot of gossip and envy about everything, and he is too proud to be dragged into that sort of thing.  It is always better, Keith, to leave alone what you know is not your own.  Honesty endures beyond all else.”

Keith made no direct response, but sprang one more irrelevant question: 

“Why didn’t papa get the grocery store?”

“How do you know,” the mother demanded with a quick glance at him.

“Papa told me.”

“Well,” she drawled as if thinking.  Then she settled back in the chair, her mind made up.  “Listen, and I will tell you a story.  Once upon a time there was a rich old man who owned a grocery store.”

“That’s where they sell prunes and raisins and sugar,” the boy put in.

“And the store was so fine,” she went on unheedingly, “that the old man was permitted to sell all those things to the king’s own kitchen.  The old man had many assistants, but at the head of them all was a young man who knew just what to do, because he had worked in such stores ever since he was a little boy.  And he was so honest and able and polite that the people liked him very much and came to the store for his sake, but the old man liked him more anybody else.”