Here was an exception, however—­something concerning the past that stirred his curiosity powerfully—­and it became his first subject for brooding.

He could remember all sorts of things, of course.  And it seemed that he had always remembered them.  Yet his mother was able to tell him things of which he knew nothing at all, although they had happened to himself.  There might be any number of such things.  What were they?  Could he recall any of them by thinking hard enough?

When this problem laid hold of his mind he would retire to the corner between the big bureau and the right-hand window in the living-room, which, by formal conferment, was reserved for him as his own “play-room.”  The space in that nook was large enough to hold a small chair, a table to match, and a few toy boxes.  There he would sit staring blindly at his toys until his mother anxiously inquired what was the matter with him.

The great question taking precedence of all the rest was:  what was the very first thing he could remember?

With puckered brows and peering pupils he would send his gaze back into the misty past, and out of it emerged invariably the same image.

He saw himself seated on a small wooden horse fastened to a little platform with wheels under it.  The horse was black with white spots, and possessed a nobly curved neck, a head with ears on top of it, and a pair of fiercely red nostrils.

The next thing recurring to his mind was a sense of swift, exhilarating movement.  His father stood at one end of the living-room, his mother at the other, and the horse with himself on it was being pushed rapidly back and forth between them.

He could even hear his own joyous shouts as his father sent the horse careering across the floor by an extra strong push.  The general impression left behind by the whole scene was one of happiness so acute that nothing else in his life compared with it.

Was it a real memory?  If so, when did it happen?  And what had become of the horse?

Finally the pressure from within became too strong and he blurted out the whole story to his mother in order to make sure of what it meant.

“You never had a horse large enough to sit on,” she declared emphatically.

“You have been dreaming, child,” Granny put in.

“What would the neighbours below have said,” his mother continued.  “And the rag carpets on the floor would have caught the wheels, anyhow.”

Removing the rag carpets except for purposes of cleaning was one of the unforgivable sins, by the bye.

“And it isn’t like your father either,” Granny added after a while, not without a suggestion of bitterness in her voice.

“Carl is always tired when he comes home,” Keith’s mother rejoined in a tone that put an end to further discussion.

Granny’s point made an impression on Keith’s mind nevertheless.  As far as he could actually remember, his father had on no occasion showed such a jolly spirit or done anything that could be used as basis for a belief in that one questionable recollection.