She had heard of the position. It was in the office of Herr Brockhaus on the second floor--a dealer in tailor's supplies. And she had heard that he was a very nice man.

"Do you think I can get it," Keith demanded eagerly.

"Why don't you run up this minute and ask," she suggested.

Keith looked as if he had been to jump off a church steeple. But in another minute he was climbing the stairs. His legs seemed rather shaky and his tongue felt like a piece of wood. The moment he opened the door, however, all his fears and hesitations were gone. Once more he was the old Keith who had made a play of studies and examinations.

Herr Brockhaus was a tall, youngish, good-looking man, a little haughty of mien, but with a tendency to smile in quite friendly fashion.

"I have as good as hired another boy who got here earlier than you," he said in reply to Keith's inquiry. On seeing Keith's dejected look, he laughed good-humouredly.

"There are plenty of other jobs," he suggested.

"But you look as if you would be kind to me and give to a chance to learn," Keith heard himself saying to his own intense astonishment.

"I can see that when you want a thing you want it real hard," Herr Brockhaus rejoined with another peasant laugh. "Well, I like that. What kind of a hand do you write?"

"Awful," Keith confessed, "but I am going to learn better."

For a good long while Keith felt himself studied from top to toe, and under that searching scrutiny he blushed as usual.

"I am willing to do anything that is required," he ventured to ease the suspense.

"All right--what did you say your name was? Keith--I'll take you, and tell the other boy that I changed my mind. When can you begin?"

"Tod ... tomorrow," Keith corrected himself with a sudden remembrance of his father.

"Good," said Herr Brockhaus. "Show up at eight. And I'll pay you ten crowns a month the first year, although as a rule volunteers don't get anything."

Keith walked home on air. The sun never shone more brightly than that day. The tall old stone houses along West Long street looked imposing and mysterious, as if they had been magic mansions full of golden opportunities for bright little boys. School seemed years away already.

Lector Booklund was a dream.

His mother listened in silence to his wonderful tale. Then she kissed him.

"When you have made a lot of money, will you present me with a new black silk dress," she asked with a suspicious l.u.s.tre in her eyes.

"Anything you want, mamma," he promised solemnly. "When I begin to make money, you'll never have to worry any more about anything."

Again she had to kiss him.

He was then a little more than halfway through his fifteenth year.

XXV

When his father came home that night, Keith hurried across the room to meet him. "Papa," he cried full of subdued excitement and a swelling of self-importance such as he had not experienced for ever so long. "I have got a job."

"What kind of a job," asked the father quietly.

"In an office." And Keith sputtered out the details.

When the whole story was told, the father stood looking at him enigmatically for a long while.

"Perhaps it is just as well," he said at last. "It certainly will make things easier for me. But bear in mind what I now tell you, boy: you will live to regret the chance you are throwing away--a chance for which I would have given one of my hands when I was of your age."

"Did you want me to go on," Keith asked uncertainly.

"I did--I always hoped that you should pa.s.s your university examinations and wear the white cap."

"And what did you want me to become?"

"A civil engineer--that's the only real profession today."

The idea was too novel to be grasped quickly by the boy. His own thoughts had never strayed in that direction, and his conception of an engineer's duties and position was extremely vague.

"An engineer," he repeated. "But then I should not have studied Latin."

"Of course not, but you chose it without asking my opinion first."

Keith's surprise increased.

"Why didn't you tell me," he insisted.

"Because I wanted you to begin to shape your own life," the father replied, "and I thought you knew what you wanted."

Keith could hardly believe his own ears.

"What do you want me to do now," he pleaded at last.

"What you feel you must," rejoined the father. "This concerns your life, and not mine. And you must make up your own mind. Whatever you decided, you have my good wishes, boy, and I shall try to help you as far as I can."

For a moment Keith had a sense of never having known his father before.

Then a thought flashed through his head: why did he not speak before?

He went into the parlour and stood at the window staring at the gloomy facade of the distillers across the lane. A motley throng of thoughts chased each other through his brain.

It was not yet too late. Nothing was settled. He could still drop the job and go back to school if he wanted. But did he want it?

The thought of school sent a slight shiver down his spine.

No, he was sick of it, of the teachers, of the tedious books, of the boys who looked down upon him and kept him at arm's length all the time, of everything that had made up his life for the last few years.

He wanted change. He must have it.

Above all else, he wanted to be free, he wanted to do as he pleased, and now he had found a way to it, he believed.

At that moment it seemed to him that his childhood suddenly had come to an end, that his manhood had begun, and that all life lay open before him.