Either through some fault of his own nature, or through the restrictive policy of his parents, Keith at nine had formed no real attachments outside of his immediate surroundings, and no life of his own that was not enclosed by the walls of his childhood home.  This state of affairs tended always to throw him back on the mother as his most satisfactory source of inspiration and the magnetic pole of his emotional compass.  And she on her part left no effort untried that could help to fasten his affections more closely to her.

Unconsciously but increasingly she worked to cut the boy off from all the rest of the world in order that she might have him the more exclusively to herself.  She expressed openly the wish that he might be a girl, because girls in those days were so much less likely to escape the parental protection.

The boy was pleased by her attempts at monopolization.  There was something flattering and softly reassuring about her passionate pleas for the uppermost place in his heart.  And yet he rebelled with increasing violence against the closeness of her clutch on him.  He seemed to choke at times, and a blind hatred rose within him without ever revealing itself as in any way related to his mother.  One of the dominant emotions of this and the following period of his life was one of intense impatience that seemed to be directed toward no particular object.  Once in a great while he turned toward his father with an expectation of relief, but this expectation was always foiled, and so he was plunged back again and again into an inner life of his own that fed almost exclusively on books and had little or nothing in common with the reality to which the new school was supposed to form a gateway.

PART III

I

The new school was located in another part of the South End, separated only by the churchyard from the old church of St. Mary Magdalene.  It was a state institution demanding an entrance fee, which, although quite reasonable, yet sufficed to keep out the children of mere wage earners.  It was a school for the offspring of the “better classes” and good enough for all but the most select who must needs turn to certain private institutions of still greater exclusiveness for instruction.

Its official title was St. Mary’s Elementary School and it had only five grades or classes, as they were called, being supplemented by a “gymnasium,” from which the pupils passed on to the university.  No boy was admitted under nine, but there seemed to be no limit at the other end, for at the time of Keith’s entrance the upper grades still held a few youngsters with well developed moustaches who, from the viewpoint of Keith’s own peach-skinned diminutiveness, looked like veritable patriarchs.  Stories were afloat about their actually being addressed as “mister” by the teachers.