The sudden emergence of Johan had filled Keith's heart with a new hope. Here was a possible playmate at last. The fact that his father was a vaktmästare like Keith's ought to settle all paternal opposition, the boy thought. But to his great surprise, he found this not to be the case. A severe cross-examination followed his return home. In the midst of it, Keith made a grievous strategic mistake, lured on by his insatiable curiosity about strange words. "Why does Johan call his mamma 'mumsey' and his papa 'popsey,'" he asked unexpectedly. "It sounds funny." "Because he does not know any better," his mother rejoined with unmistakable disapproval. "It doesn't sound nice, and it isn't nice." "But his papa and mamma don't care," Keith objected. "That's the worst of it," said the mother. "It shows they are not very nice people, and I wish to talk to your father before you can play with Johan any more." "I have heard of them," the grandmother piped up, making them both turn towards her, one hopefully and the other doubtfully. The grandmother never left the kitchen. She walked from the sofa to the big foot-stool, from the foot-stool to the table by the window, and from the table back to the sofa. Sometimes she would not be seen talking to another person for days. And yet she had a miraculous way of surprising the rest of the family with pieces of gossip picked out of the air, one might think. There was apparently not a person in the neighbourhood of whom she had not heard, and about whom she could not give some more or less intimate piece of information. They were all perfect strangers to her, but she followed their lives with as much keenness for minute details as if they had been her nearest kin or dear friends. "She was a cook in the house of the man whose office Gustafsson works in," the grandmother went on. "He used to do odd jobs for the family, cutting wood and such things, and in that way he met her in the kitchen, and one fine day they decided to get married. She is older than him, and I guess it was her last chance. But the family was crazy about her, and when they heard of it, they gave him the place of attendant in the office downstairs and the two rooms back of the office to live in. He was just a peasant boy, and she reads the Bible all day and goes to prayer-meeting at night." "How do you know all that," wondered Keith's mother, having learned by this time that the old woman's gossip was generally well founded on truth. "Oh," the grandmother said with a queer smile particular to such occasions, "a little bird sang it to me." "I think they must be rather low people," Keith's mother concluded. "Perhaps," the grandmother said, "but they have plenty of religion at least, and I don't think the boy can do much harm to Keith." Keith ran up to the grandmother and kissed her impulsively. That night there was a great family council. Keith's father was told about Johan and the Gustafssons. "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." "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!" "He knows more about the letters than I did when I began school at seven," the father came back unperturbed. "I don't think it would be very bad for him to play a little with Johan now and then," said the mother evasively, bending down to kiss Keith, who had snuggled up to her during the preceding talk. Then she put her hand through his waves of almost flaxen hair, bent his head slightly backward, looked straight into his eyes, and asked: "You don't want to leave me, do you?" "No," said Keith, hugging her passionately, "but I think I should like to go to school." The idea carried no distinct image to his mind, and he felt a little timid toward all those unknown possibilities implied by the word school, but this slight feeling of hesitation was swamped by a longing so restless and so irresistible that it sent tears to his eyes, although he could not tell himself what it was he longed for.