Breakfast was due about ll:30 and consisted generally of sundry left-overs from the preceding day, bread and butter forming one of the principal ingredients. Then came the main meal of the day, dinner, between 3:30 and 4 in the afternoon. As a rule it had only two courses: some meat dish or fish with potatoes, and a soup served last. Now and then there was a vegetable. Desserts were reserved for special occasions. To Keith each such meal was inseparably connected with the parental admonition: "Eat plenty of bread with your meat, child." The bread was of the hard kind already referred to--thin round cakes that one broke to pieces and that gave the teeth plenty of work. Various superstitions were invoked to promote the consumption of it. Thus the failure to finish a piece already broken off was alleged to result in the transfer of all one's strength to the actual consumer of the piece left behind. Keith was a docile child in spite of his impulsiveness and he did he was told and believed what he heard, but he often wondered why the rules so strictly enforced himself did not apply to his parents.
"Afternoon coffee," generally accompanied by some form of sweet bread or cake, "happened" about 5:30, and at 8 supper was served. The final meal was commonly made up of sandwiches with porridge and milk, or perhaps, when fate was remarkably propitious, thin pancakes with cranberry jam. There might be an extra snack of food at a still later hour in case of unexpected callers, but such visits were not frequent and Keith would be asleep by that time anyhow.
It was different when parties were given to formally invited company. Then Keith had to stay up--or pretend to do so--as long as the guests remained, and he must have a share of whatever the house had to offer. To such occasions he looked forward with feverish joy, not so much on account of the good things dispensed as for the sake of feeling the ordinary strict rules relaxed. Apart from Christmas, the principal celebrations took place on his parents' birthdays and "namedays." Every day in the Swedish calendar carries a name, and all those bearing it have a right to expect felicitations and presents from their relations and more intimate friends. In return they are expected to celebrate the occasion with a party that gives an excuse for showing what the house can do in the way of hospitality. The same thing applies to the birthday anniversaries, only in a higher degree. Not to celebrate one's birthday can only be a sign of poverty, miserliness or misanthropy, and to overlook the birthday anniversary of a close relative is to risk an immediate breach of connections.
Nothing was more familiar to Keith than his mother's open worries about money and his father's occasional stern reference to the need of saving. To the boy those complaints and warnings meant merely that the parents were in a depressed and unfaourable mood, tending to draw the usual constraint a little tighter about him. He was intensely sensitive to atmosphere, and too often that of his home had the same effect on his young soul as the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the house would not be shamed."
When the great day came, the home, always scrupulously neat, shone with cleanliness. Every one worked up to the last minute. Cupboards and pantries were full of unfamiliar and enticing supplies. The dining table, opened to its utmost length, groaned under the burden of innumerable cold dishes of tempting appearance, while from the kitchen came the odours of more substantial courses still in the making. A one end of Granny's bureau stood a battery of multicoloured bottles. The other end was jammed with desserts and goodies meant to be served while the guests were waiting for supper or during the card game that generally followed it. Better than anything else, however, was the father's loud laugh and eager talk, so rarely heard in the course of their regular daily existence. Even then he might be displeased by some slight slip of the boy's, and a sharp rebuke might follow, but it seemed forgotten as soon as uttered, and of other consequences there were none to be feared. Therefore, Keith wished that there might be a party every day, and while there was one going on he sometimes caught himself wondering whether, after all, he did not like his father as much as his mother, or more.
From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents' attitude toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive. To him eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end. His parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food, and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the principal source of enjoyment open to them. The same seemed true of their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than a comparison of past culinary enjoyments. Keith's father, for instance, never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to "go bad" before they could be sold. Four or five friends were drummed together. The feast took place at night in the store itself. Bread, butter, salt, pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to the oysters.
"And when morning came, and I had to open the store, there was nothing left but a keg full of empty shells," the father used to shout, laughing at the same time so that it was hard to catch what he said. Then he would smack his lips and add with earnest conviction: "I have never tasted anything better unless it be the Russian caviar we used to import for the Court."
Always it was a matter of quantity as well as quality. A feast was not a feast without more than plenty. Eating was always in order. An offer of a dish was as good as a command to partake. A refusal bordered on the offensive. Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of hospitality. Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one of life's worst evils. To eat well was to be well, and the natural conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat. Lack of appetite was a misfortune as well as a dangerous symptom, and to eat when not hungry was not only a necessity but a virtue.
Yet Keith longed for other things and he learned early that even eating has its drawbacks.