after all, a sexton was not the same as a pastor, and partly because his
mind was full of something else. It was not the country, although his
previous experience of it, when he was staying with his aunt, had given
him a rather favourable impression. No, what occupied him to the
exclusion of everything else was the thought that he would be able to
play with other children all day long, and that there would be no one to
pull him away just as a game was becoming really interesting.

Exciting days of preparation followed. And finally the day of departure
dawned.

The greater part of the journey was to be made by boat to the little
town of Enköping, where Mr. Swensson, the sexton, would be waiting with
a team. The mother could not go along, and so Keith was placed in the
hands of some people going the same way, who promised to look after him
and see that he did not fall into wrong hands when the steamer landed.

Keith had to stand in the stern of the boat and wave his handkerchief as
long as his mother remained visible. Then he was free, at last, to
surrender himself to the novelty of his situation. And as always upon
such occasions, when new impressions came crowding in upon him, the
record became too blurred for clear remembrance. This was true not only
of the trip on the steamer, the arrival at Enköping with its little
old-fashioned red houses, the meeting with Mr. Swanson, the drive of
thirty miles or more inland, the arrival at the sexton's house not far
from a white spired church, and the introduction to a seemingly endless
number of new faces, but of the whole long summer. A couple of months
sufficed to wipe out of his memory everything but a few comparatively
trivial incidents and impressions.