Father and the boys are sitting one morning at the Opera. One of father's old comrades, who is with the Royal Orchestra, has invited him to be present at a symphony rehearsal, and father has taken the boys along. When the orchestra strikes up and the auditorium is filled with tone, father is so affected that he can't control himself, and begins to weep. He sobs and blows his nose and moans aloud, time and again. He puts no restraint upon his feelings, but makes such a noise that the musicians are disturbed. A guard comes along and beckons him away, and father takes the boys by the hand and slinks out without a word of protest. All the way home his tears continue to flow.
Father is walking on, with a boy on each side, and he has kept their hands in his all the while. Suddenly the boys start crying. They understand now for the first time how much father has loved his art. It was painful for him to sit there, besotten and broken, and listen to others playing. They feel sorry for him who had never become what he might have been. It was with father as it might be with Lennart were he never to finish his flying-machine, or with Hugo if he were not to make any voyages of discovery. Think if they should one day sit like old good-for-nothings and see fine airships sailing over their heads which they had not invented and were not allowed to pilot!
The boys were sitting one morning on opposite sides of the writing-table. Father had taken a music roll under his arm and gone out. He had mumbled something about giving a music lesson, but the boys had not for a moment been tempted into believing this true.
Father is in an ugly mood as he walks up the street. He noticed the look the boys exchanged when he said that he was going to a music lesson. "They are setting themselves up as judges of their father," he thinks. "I am too indulgent toward them. I should have given them each a sound box on the ear. It's their mother, I dare say, who is setting them against me. Suppose I were to keep an eye on the fine gentlemen?" he continues. "It would do no harm to find out how they attend to their lessons."
He turns back, walks quietly across the court, opens the door very softly, and stands in the boys' room without either of them having heard him coming. The boys jump up, red in the face, and Lennart quickly snatches a bundle of papers which he throws into the table drawer.
When the boys had been in Stockholm a day or two, they had asked which school they were to attend, and the father had replied that their school-going days were over now. He would try and procure a private tutor who would teach them. This proposition he had never carried into effect, nor had the boys said anything more about going to school. But in less than a week a school chart was discovered hanging on the wall in the boys' room. The school books had been brought forth, and every morning they sat on opposite sides of an old writing-table and studied their lessons aloud. It was evident that they had received letters from their mother counselling them to try and study, so as not to forget entirely what they had learned.
Now, as father unexpectedly comes into the room, he goes up to the chart first and studies it. He takes out his watch and compares. "Wednesday, between ten and eleven, Geography." Then he comes up to the table. "Shouldn't you have geography at this hour?"
"Yes," the boys reply, growing flame-red in the face.