little lady who visited them at rare intervals dressed in a quaint old
shawl and a lace-trimmed cap. A great wonder, not unmixed with pleasure,
rose in his mind at the thought that her husband had been a sort of
servant after all. For some reason utterly beyond him, there was solace
as well as humiliation in the consciousness of a stigma, if such it be,
that attached equally to both his grandfathers, and not only to his
mother's parent. Then a new idea prompted a new question.

"Was Granny a servant when she came to Stockholm?"

"She was obliged to take service in order to live," his mother replied
very gently. "There is nothing about that to be ashamed of.... I have
known fine ladies who started in the kitchen. But, of course, one
doesn't like to talk of it to everybody."

Keith recognized the hint in her final words, but thought it needless.
He was already on his way back to his own corner, tired for the time of
asking questions, when he suddenly turned and said:

"We are just as good as anybody else, are we not?"

It was a phrase he had overheard sometime. Now it seemed to fit the
occasion, and it sounded good to him.

"There is the royal family," his mother rejoined enigmatically. "But one
of Granny's cousins was a lieutenant-colonel in the army."

"Where is he now," Keith demanded, agog with interest.

"He is dead, and--and we have never had anything to do with his family."