cottage where they lived, or anything else seen that summer, were vain.



VI

In the autumn of that year Keith was sent to a "real" school, selected
after much inquiry by his parents as combining a reasonable degree of
efficiency and social standing with an equally reasonable cost of
tuition. It was private like the first one, kept by two middle-aged
spinster sisters, one of whom was tall, angular and firm, while the
other was short, fat and sentimental. It held about two scores of
pupils, most of whom were girls. These girls ranged in years to the
near-marriageable age, while none of the boys was more than eight years
old. Thus the atmosphere was distinctly feminine, which in the eyes of
Keith's mother marked an added advantage.

The only thing that excited Keith about the new school was that it took
him farther from home than he had ever been allowed to wander unattended
before, into a hitherto unexplored region of the city known as the South
End. It was a poor man's neighbourhood on the whole, but of that Keith
knew nothing at the time. The school occupied a few large and sunny
rooms in the rear part of a sprawling old stone structure built like a
palace around an enormous cobble-stoned courtyard, with a tall arched
gateway providing entrance from the street under the front part of the
house. For a while it was quite impressive and a little disturbing, but
like everything else it soon became familiar and commonplace.

To get there from his own part of town, Keith had to cross the Sluice--a
lock enabling vessels to pass safely from Lake Maelaren to the salt