a way that made Keith understand they were talking about him and did not
want to be overheard.

As soon as school closed the secret became revealed. He would be sent
into the real country for the summer to board with perfect strangers.

"Any children," was Keith's first question. Yes, a couple of sons in the
house, and probably one or two more boys from the city, boarders
like Keith.

It seemed the thing had been planning for a long time. The mother said
something about the necessity for Keith of going where everything was
clean and wholesome--the air, the food, the people. The boy knew that
she had been worrying about him for some reason he could not guess.

An advertisement in a newspaper had led his mother on the track of what
she wanted. She read it to him--"a religious family with children of
their own would take a few well-behaved boys of good family for the
summer months and give them a real home and as good as parental care."

It turned out to be the sexton of a country parish on the northern shore
of Lake Maelaren who had devised this means of eking out his probably
limited professional income. The ensuing correspondence had proved quite
satisfactory. The mother was evidently pleased. It was almost as good as
staying with the pastor himself, she said.

Keith knew what a pastor was. He had several times heard one preach from
a funny hanging box in Great Church, and he thought of him as a man who
was always dressed in black and who was even more serious than the
father. But it did not bother him, partly because he realized that,