face and not a trace of resentment in his voice. "But she was absolutely
just about it--so just that she used to lick all four of us whenever one
had earned it. That was to keep the rest from thinking themselves any
better, she said, and also because she felt sure that all of us had
deserved it, although she had not happened to find it out."

"I think it hard and unjust," Keith's mother protested. "And I don't
believe in beating children all the time."

"Those were hard days," the father mused on, "and everybody did it, and
children seemed to know their place better then. I don't think we
suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make
us think less of mother. She had her hands full, too, and not much time
to think of nice distinctions. We were all small when father died, and
Henrik was just a baby. There was no one but her to look after us, and
how she did it, God only knows. But I have never heard her speak one
word of complaint, and she always managed. Sometimes there was little
enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you
herself, but she always had something for us. Then we had to go to work
just as soon as we could. I was thirteen when I began to add my share to
the common heap."

"Did you go to school," Keith ventured, having recently overheard some
talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

"I did," the father replied, "but not long. I wanted to study, and my
teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me
free admission to the higher school. But mother wouldn't listen. And I
suppose it was not to be."