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Updated: May 13, 2025
Chances were not lacking, for Johan's mother was too wrapt up in her postils and religious speculations to watch them closely, and there was always the outhouse to which they could retire for privacy. Their relationship was a peculiar one. Although the younger by a few months and the smaller by several inches, Keith was the leader and the aggressor.
But Karl Johan's horses were displeased, and hurried on; they did not approve of the new arrangement. At the village shop they made a halt, and consoled themselves a little. When they started again, Karl Johan's horses were refractory, and had to be quieted.
The summer dragged along joylessly, and Keith had to fall back on Johan's company in so far as he could obtain it. But Johan was getting very independent. He had plenty of other acquaintances, and what Keith saw of them made him deem it wiser not to mention them at all to his mother. He was gradually learning discretion of a kind.
"I think they are about as good as ourselves," was his verdict, given in a tone suggesting contempt for his own position rather than respect for that of Johan's father. "But Keith has his toys, and that ought to be enough for him."
And, looking up, the Duchess saw and cried aloud and stood, thereafter, pale and speechless and wide of eye, while Johan's cheek grew red and in his look was shame.
Keith had heard, but his mind was absorbed by the new idea. "Well," said his mother, "I cannot take care of him properly. He is running down to that Gustafsson boy all time and most of the time I can't get him home again except by going for him." "Johan's mother said yesterday that I hadn't been there half an hour when you called for me," Keith broke in.
"It is rather lonely for him," the mother rejoined, "and he should get out a little, I suppose, but I hate to have him playing about the streets, and I fear Johan's manners are not very good." "The best thing is to send him to school," said the father. "What are you talking of, Carl," the mother cried. "The idea when he is barely five!"
They represented, besides, something that was entirely his own, with which no one else could interfere. It was a secret that would have been the sweeter for being shared with some one else, he felt, but Johan's peculiar attitude in this matter had filled him with a shyness not his own by nature. Then, with the sleep, came also the dreams.
Little by little, however, Keith extracted various stories about those new friends of Johan's, who lived in one of the neighbouring lanes and who had a big vacant attic at their disposal. There quite a number of boys gathered daily, and Johan did his best to impress Keith with the desperate character of their doings. Girls came to that meeting-place, too.
Murray would fight for a thing like that, he said to himself. Or would he? Without having reached a decision Keith made for his own house, trying to look as if Johan didn't exist. "He has no real use for you, and you'll find it out," was Johan's parting shot. Keith was suddenly struck with the coarseness of Johan's manners and speech.
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