She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her. You don't suppose I stole you, do you?"
He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon. The mystery of being grew still more baffling.
"Mudda!"
"What's it now?"
"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?"
She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap you."
He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda. She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him.
As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against her petticoats.
"Mudda, sing!"
"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot dish-water'll scald you."