In the lane they turned and saw the mother lying in the window to watch them. As usual, kisses were thrown back and forth as they passed up the lane, but Keith felt rather impatient about it, and it was with a marked sense of relief he turned the corner into East Long Street. He was eager to push ahead into unknown regions and did not care to look back.
Although he spoke little enough, the father proved a more genial companion than Keith had dared to expect. In fact, he had been a little oppressed at the thought of being entirely alone with the father, which was quite a new experience to him. But now he found it a pleasure, and their communion seemed more easy than when the mother was with them. He walked sedately enough, clinging to one of his father's soft, white hands, but every so often he ventured a skip and a jump without being rebuked, and on the whole he felt the kind of happiness that used to come on Christmas Eve, after the father had started to distribute the presents.
Keith had frequently accompanied his mother as far as the little square at the end of the street, and he pointed proudly to the grocery store where he had helped to buy things.
"Yes," responded the father, and again his tone seemed strangely unfamiliar to the boy. "I might have had such a store myself, if luck had been with me."
The idea was more than Keith could digest at once. It was too overwhelming, and once more he looked at his father with the feeling of wonder and awe that sometimes took hold of him almost against his will--a feeling that clashed hopelessly with the nervous shyness commonly inspired by the father's stern manners.
"Why didn't you get it," the boy ventured at last.
"Because I was born under the Monkey Star," replied the father grimly.
The boy wondered what kind of star that was, but still more he wondered at the father's mood which appeared to indicate a displeasure not directed at the questioner. Before Keith could ask anything more, they had started across one of the open market places that line the fresh-water side of the old City.
The place was empty except for a few closed and abandoned booths. But at the foot of it lay rows of one-masted sailing vessels loaded halfway up their masts with piles of fire-wood. In the background, beyond a small sheet of water crossed by a low iron bridge, rose abruptly the rocky walls of the South End, with funny old houses perched precariously along their edges. Keith stared so hard at all the new things that not a single question had a chance to escape him before they entered another street and stopped in front of a stone house that to him looked like a castle.
It had a real portal instead of an ordinary doorway, and the inside was still more impressive. Keith had been to church once or twice, and for a moment he thought himself in one. But he saw no seats, and his father did not look solemn at all. The walls were of stone curiously streaked and coloured. The ceiling was so far up that Keith had to bend far backwards to see it. It was full of ornaments and supported by two rows of tall round stone pillars so thick that Keith could not get his arms halfway around one of them. In the background rose a very broad and seemingly endless stairway of white stone. While they climbed it step by step, Keith wondered if the king in his palace had anything like it.