The lodger happened to be away when they got home, and the mother had opened the door to the parlour in order to get a little more air and light into the living-room. After dinner the father went into the parlour to take a nap on the big sofa, while the mother settled down comfortably in her easy chair, a piece of handiwork on her lap as usual. Keith took up his customary position on the footstool to tell her what he had seen and done during his morning excursion. She was eager to hear everything and helped him along with questions, and yet there ran through her very eagerness a subtle inner resistance which the boy felt vaguely. It as if she never really cared for anything concerning him in which she herself had not taken part. The original glamour had returned to every aspect of his new experience, and he tried excitedly to describe the wonders of the vestibule, the stairway and the big hall. In the midst of it he paused suddenly and fell to staring into vacancy. "Was that all," she asked, puzzled by his silence. "Lena dusts our rooms, doesn't she," was his rather startling counter-question. "Mostly," the mother replied with a searching glance at his puckered brows. "Although I sometimes ..." "You don't have to," the boy broke in. "No" she admitted, "but then I am sure it is properly done." "Is that why papa dusts the tables in the bank?" A pause followed during which it was the mother's turn to stand the boy's intense scrutiny. "No," she said at last. "He does it because it is a part of his work, and a shame it is that he has to. Scrub-women come in and do the rest of the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the attendants have to take turns doing that part of it. That's why your father has to leave so very early in the morning." Mother and son lapsed into silence once more. It was broken by another question from the boy. "Why couldn't I take some stamps that had been thrown away?" "Had your father said anything about it before you took them?" "He told me not to touch anything." "Then you couldn't because he had told you to leave things alone. He is so careful in all such matters. Sometimes he goes a little too far, perhaps, but you can be sure that he means right. Other people want the stamps, and there is a lot of gossip and envy about everything, and he is too proud to be dragged into that sort of thing. It is always better, Keith, to leave alone what you know is not your own. Honesty endures beyond all else." Keith made no direct response, but sprang one more irrelevant question: "Why didn't papa get the grocery store?" "How do you know," the mother demanded with a quick glance at him. "Papa told me." "Well," she drawled as if thinking. Then she settled back in the chair, her mind made up. "Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a rich old man who owned a grocery store." "That's where they sell prunes and raisins and sugar," the boy put in. "And the store was so fine," she went on unheedingly, "that the old man was permitted to sell all those things to the king's own kitchen. The old man had many assistants, but at the head of them all was a young man who knew just what to do, because he had worked in such stores ever since he was a little boy. And he was so honest and able and polite that the people liked him very much and came to the store for his sake, but the old man liked him more anybody else." "Was the old man nice," Keith asked. "Yes, indeed, but he was also very peculiar, and the most peculiar thing about him was that he hated all women and thought that a man who married was lost for ever." "Did he have any children?" "No, men who want no wives get no children. That is a part of their punishment. And so when the owner of the store got older and older, and began to feel tired, he didn't know to whom he should leave the store. You may be sure that he thought it over many times, because he was exceedingly proud of the store and wanted it to go on. The result of his thinking was that he decided to give it to the young man whom he trusted and liked so much." "How did the young man look," Keith broke in. "Something like your father, I should say. But while all this was going on, the young man had met a princess and fallen in love with her...." "A real princess," asked the boy with wide-open eyes. "All princesses are real in their own opinion. And she and the young man had promised to marry each other, and this the old man learned at last. Then he was very, very angry and told the young man that he was a fool. And when the young man answered that there were many of his kind, and that he had pledged his word, the old man told him that he would not get the store unless he promised to have nothing more to do with the princess. But the young man loved her and would not give her up, and so, you see--he didn't get the store. Don't you think that was nobly done, Keith?" "Ye-es," the boy assented without particular enthusiasm, "but if he had got the store, we should have been rich now?" "We," repeated the mother in a funny tone. "Why, then there would have been no we." "Why not," he demanded. "Or it might have been worse still," she whispered as if momentarily forgetful of the boy's presence. "There is your father now," she said a moment later, when a slight stir was heard in the adjoining room. "Don't say anything more about the store.... Do you know what your father wanted to be most of all?" Keith looked up speculatively as his father appeared at the doorway to the parlour--a man of medium height, who stooped because he was nearsighted, and so looked shorter than he was, but also stronger because of the great width of his shoulders. "I can tell you," the father put in. "When I couldn't study, I wanted to be a sailor, and I tried to take hire on a ship whose master knew me and wished to help me. Then they found out that I was too nearsighted to steer by the compass, and that was the end of it. Didn't I tell that I was born under the Monkey Star?" "Don't talk like that, Carl," the mother protested, rising to give him a kiss. "You have done very well, and there is no man in the bank more respected than you." "Yes," he admitted with something like a grin. "They know I wouldn't steal even if I had a chance, and they let me collect four million crowns, as I did the other day, but I shall never get beyond where I am today. So there you are--what's struck for a farthing will never be a dollar." Keith's head was still full of what he had heard when he went to bed that night, and he didn't know whether to feel happy or unhappy about it. His father had grown bigger and more interesting in some ways, and yet the boy's chief impression was of a failure and a fall. It was this impression that stuck most deeply in his mind.