"Do I often talk in my sleep," he asked.

"Hardly ever," said his mother. "But the other night you read the Lord's
Prayer from beginning to end, and I wish you would read it as nicely
when are saying your prayers before going to sleep."

"He is studying too much," Granny put in from the kitchen. "His nose is
always buried in a book. That's the whole trouble, I tell you."

"No, mamma, I don't think reading does him any harm," said Keith's
mother, and for some reason Keith felt relieved by the diversion.



XX

Even Keith could not escape a feeling about this time of having arrived
at some sort of station or landmark on his road through life.

He was frightfully self-centred. He seemed to be thinking about nothing
but himself. In reality, however, he was not reflecting at all on the
character and probable course of his life. It was all a matter of
feeling and what concerned him was merely the comforts or discomforts,
pleasures or pains, exhilarations or boredoms of the passing moment. The
future was a word that, at the most, implied things that might happen a
few days after tomorrow. The convinced visioning of events a year or
more distant was still utterly beyond him. And the past seemed to vanish
with the setting sun of the day just ended.

Yet he was dimly aware of facing a transition that, somehow, must make a