Many more weeks went before his mother was herself again. Even then a difference remained. She was more given to worry than before and clung to husband and child with a concern that frequently became oppressive.
Then, one fine day, she was all gay and smiling again, and bustled about the home with new eagerness, and told Keith a lot of things about England, and once actually danced across the floor while he was vainly trying to keep step with her. And the father tried hard to look his grouchiest when he returned home that night, but failed. And Keith was allowed to stay up quite late, and when he was in bed at last, and almost asleep, he thought he saw his father in the big easy chair by the window, with the mother seated on his lap kissing him. And just as he was dropping off, he heard, as if in a dream, his father's voice saying:
"Look out! I think the Crown Prince is still awake!"
VI
Some persons said that Keith looked like his father, others that he was the very image of his mother.
"He has my light hair and Carl's brown eyes," said his mother often when that topic was under discussion, and saying it seemed to make her happy.
"As a baby he was so pretty that people would stop us on the street to ask whose child he was," Granny might put in, if she happened to be within hearing. Then she would add with a glance at Keith: "But that is all gone now."
Keith himself never gave much thought to his looks, but any comparison with his mother struck him as quite foolish.
He liked to look at her, especially at her hair, which was very plentiful and in colour like beaten copper with glints of gold in it. Her skin was very fair and soft as the softest velvet. Her eyes were blue, and in bright moments they had the softness of the sky of a Swedish summer night. But when the clouds of depression closed in upon her, they grew pale and light less and disturbingly furtive, so that Keith's glance found it hard to meet them.