Among the less intimate friends of his mother was a young widow with a little girl about a year younger than Keith. For some reason unknown to the boy, those two came to see his mother several times that Spring. It was the first time in his life Keith met a girl on familiar terms.

Clara was slender and elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling down her back. She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her laugh. When they played, she was always ready to fall in with any whim of Keith’s.

One afternoon, when the days were growing longer, Clara’s mother asked permission to leave her with the Wellanders while she attended to some business in the neighbourhood. Keith’s mother was occupied in the kitchen in some manner making her wish to have the door to the living-room closed. Thus the two children were left to play by themselves.

He never could remember how it began, and he could not tell what put the idea in his head....

It was a new game, and she played it as readily as any other he might have proposed. They had crawled so far into his own corner by the window that they were almost hidden behind mamma’s bureau.

At first they whispered to each other, eagerly as children do, but only with the eagerness they might have shown if playing hide-and-seek. Then he raised her little dress, and she didn’t seem to mind. He also undid his own dress, and they studied each other’s bodies, noting the differences.

The end of it was that they laid down together on the floor. He put his mouth to hers and hugged her just as tightly as he could. When they had been lying in way for a while, he whispered to her:

“Isn’t it nice?”

And she dutifully whispered back: “It is!”

A few minutes later they were playing with his tin soldiers, and soon after Clara’s mother returned to take her away.

During their entire play both doors had remained closed. Keith was quite sure of that. He had looked before he started the new game, although he was not aware of trespassing on prohibited territory.

Afterwards he felt rather uneasy. There was a distinct sense of risk attaching to that game, and he wondered whether Clara might tell her mother. At the same time the thought of what he had done filled him with inexplicable satisfaction, as if, in some way, he had put something over on the grown-ups.

As for his own mother she seemed to be watching him with unusual concern during the next few days, and he could not escape a suspicion that she knew. Closed doors did not seem to prevent grown-up people from knowing what children did.

At the same time he wondered why he and Clara should not be playing as they had done. There was really nothing to it. And the comparisons they had made took no hold of his imagination. The differences revealed he accepted as he accepted anything that had no direct bearing on his own happiness.

As far as he could recall afterwards, he never saw Clara again. Nor did he seem to miss her.