Keith’s mother did like the rest, and generally she took the boy along as he was admitted without extra charge.  Then mother and son would get into a tremendous tub full of hot water—­so large and so full that Keith had to sit up in order to keep his head above water.  He always enjoyed it very much, and especially he enjoyed feeling his mother’s soft body close to his own.

On an occasion of this kind he had already finished his bath and was sitting on a wooden bench beside the tub wrapped in a big sheet.  The old woman attendant stood ready with a similar sheet for his mother, who was just stepping out of the tub facing the boy.

She was still young, and her skin, always beautiful, was aglow with the heat of the bath and the friction of the scrubbing.

Keith stared open-eyed at her, unconscious of any particular interest, and yet filled with a vague, slightly disturbing sense of pleasure.

Then his mother caught his glance.  Their eyes met.  A slight flush spread over her face.

Grabbing the sheet from the old woman, she flung it about herself.  As she did so, he heard her say to the attendant: 

“That young gentleman will have to bathe with his father hereafter, I guess.”

At first he was conscious of a rebuke, and the cause of it left him quite at sea.  He would probably have puzzled over it a great deal more than he did, had not his mind become preoccupied with the idea that he would be allowed to accompany his father to the men’s part of the establishment.  It was an idea that filled him with a sort of shrinking pride.

IX

Among the less intimate friends of his mother was a young widow with a little girl about a year younger than Keith.  For some reason unknown to the boy, those two came to see his mother several times that Spring.  It was the first time in his life Keith met a girl on familiar terms.

Clara was slender and elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling down her back.  She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her laugh.  When they played, she was always ready to fall in with any whim of Keith’s.

One afternoon, when the days were growing longer, Clara’s mother asked permission to leave her with the Wellanders while she attended to some business in the neighbourhood.  Keith’s mother was occupied in the kitchen in some manner making her wish to have the door to the living-room closed.  Thus the two children were left to play by themselves.

He never could remember how it began, and he could not tell what put the idea in his head....

It was a new game, and she played it as readily as any other he might have proposed.  They had crawled so far into his own corner by the window that they were almost hidden behind mamma’s bureau.

At first they whispered to each other, eagerly as children do, but only with the eagerness they might have shown if playing hide-and-seek.  Then he raised her little dress, and she didn’t seem to mind.  He also undid his own dress, and they studied each other’s bodies, noting the differences.