"I am not blaming the child," the old lady began in the same passive, quietly assured tone. But before she got further, the father broke in:
"I think Keith had better go and play in his own corner--and please keep quiet, for grandmother and I have important things to talk of."
Keith retired as directed, and at that moment growing up seemed to him a more unreal and impossible thing than ever.
Not long afterwards the grandmother left, both parents escorting her to the outside door. When they returned to the living-room, Keith heard his mother say:
"I don't see why she should always find fault with Keith. He's not a bit worse than Brita's Carl, whom she is helping to spoil just as fast as she can."
"Well, that's her way," replied the father, paying no attention to the latter part of the remark. "She was brought up that way herself, and that's the way she brought up the four of us."
He was evidently in high good-humour and did what Keith had never seen him do before when no company was present. He got out a cigar from one of the little drawers in the upper part of mamma's bureau and sat down at the still covered dining table to smoke it. This made Keith feel almost as if they were having a party, and soon he sneaked out of his corner and joined the parents at the table. First he stood hesitatingly beside his mother, but little by little he edged over to the father until he actually was leaning against the latter's knee without being rebuffed. The father even put his hand on Keith's head, and the soup episode became very distant and dim.
"She used to lick us mercilessly," the father said as if speaking chiefly to himself, and as he spoke there was a reminiscent smile on his 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."