use. His impression was that it had always been his, and once he asked
his mother if it really had been his before he was born.

"Of course it was," she said with a sly smile, "but we took the liberty
to use it for other purposes until you arrived"

At first glance this seemed quite reasonable to Keith, though nothing to
smile at so far as he could see. Later he became conscious of a vague
sense of annoyance. It would have been more pleasant if no one else had
ever used that drawer.

Across the room from Granny's bureau, in the corner just inside the door
to the kitchen, towered the characteristic Swedish oven--a round column
of white glazed bricks, with highly polished brass shutters in front of
the small cubical fire-place, where nothing but birchwood was burned. In
the narrow crack between the oven and the wall rested always a birch
rod, which was often referred to at critical moments. A new rod, with
brightly coloured feathers attached to the tip of every twig, appeared
regularly on Shrove Tuesday and tended slightly to spoil that otherwise
glorious day, when large cross buns stuffed with a mixture of crushed
almond and sugar were served in hot milk for dinner. Though the rod was
little more than a symbol of family discipline, Keith always disliked
its presence as a threat to his dignity if not to his hide.

A double washstand, looking like a document chest in the daytime, the
chaiselongue on which Keith slept at night, and the door to the best
room occupied all the rest of that wall except a corner by the window,
where stood his mother's high-backed easy chair, with the little
work-table beside it and a hassock in front of it. To that chair she
would retire whenever her household duties permitted, and thither Keith