not play on it.

But his father used to say that the only instrument he cared to hear was
a drum.



V

His mother's chief grievance was her health. She was rarely quite well,
and they had a family physician who would appear from time to time
without being sent for. Yet her illness seemed, as a rule, not to
prevent her from being about and attending to her household duties.

Once, however, while Keith was still too small to receive clear
impressions, she had to keep in bed for a long time and during much of
that time she seemed to have forgotten him entirely. The father was more
taciturn and reserved than usual, and even the boy could see that he was
worried. Friends and relatives came and went with a quite uncommon
frequency, and all of them spoke to Keith in a strange manner that,
although not unpleasant, had a tendency to make him choke. A hundred
times a day he was told that he must keep quiet for his mother's sake,
and that it was no time for boisterous playing--if he really must play
at all. Most of the time he was in the kitchen, and on a few occasions
he was even permitted to stay all by himself in the parlour, where there
were all sorts of big books with any number of pictures on the fine oval
table standing in front of an old sofa so huge that to crawl up on its
seat was almost like going off into another room.

Finally he was taken to the home of Aunt Brita, his father's married