“Was the old man nice,” Keith asked.

“Yes, indeed, but he was also very peculiar, and the most peculiar thing about him was that he hated all women and thought that a man who married was lost for ever.”

“Did he have any children?”

“No, men who want no wives get no children.  That is a part of their punishment.  And so when the owner of the store got older and older, and began to feel tired, he didn’t know to whom he should leave the store.  You may be sure that he thought it over many times, because he was exceedingly proud of the store and wanted it to go on.  The result of his thinking was that he decided to give it to the young man whom he trusted and liked so much.”

“How did the young man look,” Keith broke in.

“Something like your father, I should say.  But while all this was going on, the young man had met a princess and fallen in love with her....”

“A real princess,” asked the boy with wide-open eyes.

“All princesses are real in their own opinion.  And she and the young man had promised to marry each other, and this the old man learned at last.  Then he was very, very angry and told the young man that he was a fool.  And when the young man answered that there were many of his kind, and that he had pledged his word, the old man told him that he would not get the store unless he promised to have nothing more to do with the princess.  But the young man loved her and would not give her up, and so, you see—­he didn’t get the store.  Don’t you think that was nobly done, Keith?”

“Ye-es,” the boy assented without particular enthusiasm, “but if he had got the store, we should have been rich now?”

“We,” repeated the mother in a funny tone.  “Why, then there would have been no we.”

“Why not,” he demanded.

“Or it might have been worse still,” she whispered as if momentarily forgetful of the boy’s presence.

“There is your father now,” she said a moment later, when a slight stir was heard in the adjoining room.  “Don’t say anything more about the store....  Do you know what your father wanted to be most of all?”

Keith looked up speculatively as his father appeared at the doorway to the parlour—­a man of medium height, who stooped because he was nearsighted, and so looked shorter than he was, but also stronger because of the great width of his shoulders.

“I can tell you,” the father put in.  “When I couldn’t study, I wanted to be a sailor, and I tried to take hire on a ship whose master knew me and wished to help me.  Then they found out that I was too nearsighted to steer by the compass, and that was the end of it.  Didn’t I tell that I was born under the Monkey Star?”

“Don’t talk like that, Carl,” the mother protested, rising to give him a kiss.  “You have done very well, and there is no man in the bank more respected than you.”

“Yes,” he admitted with something like a grin.  “They know I wouldn’t steal even if I had a chance, and they let me collect four million crowns, as I did the other day, but I shall never get beyond where I am today.  So there you are—­what’s struck for a farthing will never be a dollar.”