Now he was
disabled for ever, and proud Aunt Brita was at her wit's end to keep the
home and the family together.
There were the two half-brothers of Uncle Wilhelm's silly wife--popular
and dashing young fellows reading blithely the purple path to
destruction. Even Keith's naive mind had discovered which way they were
headed, although his thoughts of them were not free from admiration.
And there were still others. Wherever he turned within the narrowing
family circle, he met similar instances of progress in the wrong
direction. Some were sinners and some were victims of fate--or seemed
so--but it came to the same thing in the end.
"The Wellanders are going," Keith's mother said one day to Aunt Brita
when she was too depressed and worried to mind the boy's presence.
"Yes," replied Aunt Brita grimly, "and so is everybody else who ever had
anything to do with them. Keith will have to start it all over again
from the beginning."
That seemed to settle it for the moment. Of what avail could his own
feeble struggles be in the face of an adverse destiny?
He brooded over it, and out of his brooding came resentment, and more
and more this resentment turned against his relatives in a fury of
disgust. He had a feeling of their having betrayed him.
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