Of course, excursions could be made, particularly to the kitchen where Granny was always restlessly waiting for “one more kiss,” and once in a great while to the “best room” which mostly was occupied by some stranger whose small weekly rent paid the servant’s wages.  But to the living-room one always returned in the end, and during his first years this narrow confinement did not strike Keith as a hardship.

The room seemed quite large to him at that time, with distances and vistas and diversions sufficient for his childish fancy.  It was a pleasant room, with brightly striped rag carpets on the floor and two pretty large windows framed by snow-white lace curtains.  Crammed as it was with objects needed for its many different uses, it was always kept in a state of the most scrupulous order and instant disaster followed any attempt as a disarrangement.

It was a whole world by itself, full of interesting things for a small boy to puzzle over.  It was also a world in evolution.  Every so often a piece of furniture would disappear and a better one take its place, to be studied and admired and tried out again and again.  Back of every improvement lay a unifying ambition.  Its key-word was mahogany.  The superior social respectability of this wood could not be disputed, and it had a sort of natural dignity that harmonized with the father’s solid taste—­though the mother might have preferred something lighter and brighter.  And a microcosm of mahogany might, after all, be worth living for when loftier illusions had gone on the scrap heap.

Practically everything in the room had a history as well as a special place.  There was the main chest of drawers, for instance, known as “mamma’s bureau” and placed near one of the windows, where a good light fell on the swinging mirror forming a separate piece on top of it.  A journeyman carpenter had made that chest to prove himself a master of his trade under the old gild rules.  Then he put it up at lottery to raise money with which to open a shop of his own.  Keith’s father bought a lot while still engaged, and won the prize which became the chief wedding present of his bride—­to be cherished above all other objects to her dying day.

It was really a fine piece of work, of mahogany, with daintily carved and twisted columns along the front corners, and so highly polished that Keith could see his own face in the rich brown glimmer of its surfaces.  It had four drawers.  The three lower ones were divided between the parents and held all sorts of things, from shirts and socks to mother’s mahogany yard stick, which had a turned handle and a tapering blade that made it pass excellent muster as a sword.  The top drawer could only be pulled out halfway, but then the front of it came down and it changed into a writing desk, with an intriguing array of small drawers and pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle.  To ransack all of these was Keith’s most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a middle-aged man, and in the room behind him his mother lay dead....