In school it was the same. And the fact that Murray attended to his studies with scrupulous exactness was probably one of the factors that helped Keith through the grade without any loss of standing as a scholar.
Like Loth, Murray had mildly artistic leanings, and because he liked to draw and to sing, Keith, too, had to join in those studies, although both were elective, and although the singing classes twice a week consumed one of the two precious lunch hours that otherwise could be used so profitably for play or study. Keith had neither aptitude nor interest for draftsmanship, being curiously set toward the written word. He would have liked to sing well, as he had noticed that boys having a good voice were always popular and received a lot of flattering attention. But his ear was so poor that for a while it looked as if he would not even be admitted to the singing practices. His persistence prevailed in the end, and when he and Murray stood side by side, using the same song-book while practicing some brave old student song, he felt as much happiness as ever fell to his share in those days.
They had common hours in gymnastics, too, but they were compulsory three times a week, and Murray took them as a duty rather than a pleasure. Keith them on the whole, and unlike most of the other boys, he preferred the slow routine of the setting-up exercises to the more athletic features. While he never consciously realized the cause of that preference at the time, it would not have been difficult for a fairly intelligent observer to discover it.
Keith was still one of the smallest boys in the school utterly lacking any physical superiority, although he was in excellent health and never had experienced a single one of the ailments that commonly dodge the steps of childhood. He could not shine in jumping or leaping or climbing, but in the drill his painstaking attention placed him on a par with everybody else. It was his one chance of feeling himself the physical equal of his schoolmates, and it was the only field of common endeavour outside the lessons where he was not made to feel his own inferiority.
XIX
The insufficiency of one room as a living place for three persons had long been evident. Keith was in his twelfth year, and he still slept on the chaiselongue opposite his father's and mother's bed. He had ceased to pretend that the corner between the window and his mother's bureau could possibly be considered a satisfactory "play-room." Then a tenant who had lived with them quite a while left, and the parlour became unexpectedly vacant. Keith revelled in the free use of it, and his mother talked seriously of not renting it again, but the father insisted that they could not afford to keep it for themselves.
Then Keith's mother had a bright idea. She inserted an advertisement offering a home and "as good as parental care" to a boy from the country for the school season. An answer was received, negotiations progressed favourably, and soon Albert Mendelius, the son of a minister, was installed in the parlour with understanding that his use of it was exclusive only at night. In the daytime it was common ground for both boys, and Keith did his studying in there, but he continued to sleep on the chaiselongue.
The boys got on very well together, and yet no real friendship sprang up between them. Albert, who attended a different school, had his own associates, and Keith could not take much of his mind off Murray. It made a great improvement in Keith's living conditions, however, and he hoped it would last.
When Albert went home to celebrate Christmas, Keith was asked to pay him a visit after the holidays. This invitation became still more attractive when Keith received a fine pair of skates for a Christmas present. He had never seen the country in winter, and the impression it made on him was a little startling. The sight of the dark pines against the white carpet of the snow filled him with a mystic longing so strong that it almost frightened him. When he and Albert put on their skates and stretched out at full speed across the lake that spread its floor of dark glass within a stone's throw of the vicarage, he had a sense of never having lived before. The spaciousness of the house and the pleasant evenings spent cracking nuts and eating apples in front of the blazing fire-place were also revelations that filled his mind with many new thoughts. Why was his own home not like this?