"No one has a better heart than Henrik," Keith heard his father say once, "but he has no more spine than a cucumber, and he can't keep away from drink."
Then the food was brought in, and Uncle Henrik was forgotten. As usual, there was a meat course to begin with, and Keith ate what for him was a big portion. Nor did he get into any trouble beyond having an extra large piece of hard bread put beside his plate by the father and finding the disposal of it rather difficult.
The meat was followed by a large bowl of soup, and the very sight of it made Keith look unhappy--a fact that did not escape his father.
Keith cared little for soups, while both parents liked them, and he had a particular dislike of soups made on a meat stock, like the one just brought in. For some reason that Keith might have thought funny under other circumstances, it was called Carpenter Soup, and it contained a lot of rather coarse vegetables. Among these were green celery and parsnips, both of which filled the boy with an almost morbid disgust.
While the mother was serving and Keith was waiting in dumb agony, it flashed through his mind that Uncle Granstedt might be eating that kind of soup. If so, the boy thought, he would rather let himself be killed than made a carpenter.
As the turn came to his own plate, Keith tried to catch his mother's eye with a signalled appeal to put in as little as possible, but she was talking to her husband and not noticing the boy at all. And so, at last, he found himself confronted with a plate filled to the brim.
The first few spoonfuls went down without much resistance, chiefly because he confined himself to the fluid part of the soup. Then it seemed of a sudden as if one more mouthful would choke him, and his eating became a mere dallying with his spoon.
"Go on and finish your soup," the father urged sternly.
"I can't."
"Why?"