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Keir, being an orphan, lodged with Mrs. Marter of Mulberry Row, and Mrs. Marter was sixty and a widow. She was a round and comfortable woman whose figure was divided into two bulges by her apron strings, and she was a great talker, but she fed Keir well and charged him only twenty-five shillings a week for his board and lodging.

Occasionally she gave him good advice.

“Never you have anything to do with the skinny sort, or a woman with a beady black eye, or a girl as gets chilblains and a red nose.”

Most of her advice was superfluous, for Keir seemed proof against petticoats or shy of them, though his finances might have justified little adventures. He was paid one and fivepence an hour, and with overtime he could make his four pounds a week. His National Health and Unemployment Insurance payments totalled one and fourpence a week. He did not drink and his cigarette bill was negligible.

As a worker young Keir was a warm man. He was putting by two pounds a week, and his spare cash went mostly on books. He picked them up second-hand at a shabby old shop in Church Lane or indulged himself in one of a series on economics and industrialism. He held certificates from the secondary school for building construction and drawing and the trade course. His bed-sitting-room was full of books. He had made himself a bookcase with glass doors, and Mrs. Marter, when she was doing his room, would shake her head at all this literature.

For Keir was such a serious young man, and though no lodger could have given Mrs. Marter less trouble, she would have preferred a youngster who was less worthy, less silently intense. Mrs. Marter “my deared” everything and everybody, and she even managed to “my dear” her lodger, but without that satisfying sense of motherliness that swelled in her like a loaf in an oven. Mrs. Marter believed that boys should be boys, and young men—just a little hearty, and it wasn’t as though Keir hadn’t looks and a sense of colour. He owned a pair of brown plus-fours and a tight blue pull-over which he put on when he went cycling on Sundays.

On that particular Saturday in May, Keir returned to Mulberry Row at five o’clock. Mrs. Marter had his tea ready and was waiting to go out for her Saturday shopping. He hung up his hat in the narrow passage and went into the scullery to wash.

Mrs. Marter was filling the tea-pot. She proposed to allow herself a ninepenny seat in the Kingham Picture House. Keir never went to the pictures. She heard him busy at the roller towel, and his voice came to her from the scullery.

“Oh—I shall be out tomorrow.”

Well, that wasn’t unusual, but why didn’t he take a girl with him? There was young Ida Thomas at No. 5, a nice girl if ever there was one, and quite ready to be interested in Keir.

“Wanting sandwiches, my dear?”

“Just some bread and cheese, and a slice of cake.”

The usual celibate meal! Keir was no more interested in food than he was in girls. He seemed to browse upon books. Well, some day perhaps he would get it badly and with the wrong sort of girl. Mrs. Marter was inclined to regard him as dreadfully innocent. And she did enjoy cooking a good Sunday dinner and eating it and going to sleep afterwards.

“Have a little bit of ham, my dear. I can get you a couple of slices at the International.”

But Keir did not react to the crude colour of ham. He said that bread and cheese would do, but Mrs. Marter might buy him two apples.

So Keir sat down to his tea, and Mrs. Marter put on her best hat and collected a string-bag and went out to shop. Apples—indeed! Well, there ought to be an Eve in the picture. She supposed that Keir would go and fiddle with his bicycle, which he kept in a little shed in the garden; and then disappear upstairs and pick up some book; and that was exactly what he did do.

He had an old basket chair in his bed-sitting-room. He pushed it close to the open window and sat down with the poems of Keats. He had discovered Keats only two months ago. “Windows opening upon foam!” And his particular window opened upon Mrs. Marter’s one apple tree, an old Blenheim Orange. It was in full flower, and the flowers were full of bees.