Laurence came home early on Saturdays and Winnie decided to dress. As she opened the front of her négligé Bobby entered the room and made her hesitate. He sweated and panted, dragging his feet and lugging with both hands a small tin bucket filled with the dirt he had dug in the back yard. He was very fat. He wore overalls and there was dirt smeared in the creases of his neck under his firm chin.
"Bobby! How can you!"
"Dirt. Nice dirt," Bobby explained. Everything about him showed that he belonged to himself. His brown eyes were passively against his mother. Grunting laboriously, he stooped and began to empty the rich purplish earth on the clean-swept blue carpet. Winnie's eyes flashed.
"Don't you dare do that, Bobby!" She sprang toward him, trying to be angry.
He did not mind. He kept his fat shoulders bent to his task.
"Stop it, I say!" Only a few grains of the damp, dark soil remained in the bright bucket. She gripped his elbow. He glanced at her, his solemn eyes twinkling with a kind of placid malice. His grasp on the tin handle relaxed and he sat down very flat on his plump bottom. Winnie dropped down beside him and began to laugh. She could not have said why but she always felt flattered by his defiance.
"Now what shall I do?" she demanded. They stared at each other.
"I'm makin' a house," Bobby said. There were still harsh lights in his placid eyes. They made her ashamed and glad that she was his mother. Her heart beat very fast and, escaping from an emotion which perplexed and disturbed her, she threw her arms about him and buried her face against his cool ear and his moist, cool cheek. "Oh, you love me! You love me! I know you love me!" she crooned, rocking him against her. "You love me as well as you do Papa, I know you do."
Bobby wriggled. "Don't love Papa!" he said.
"But you must! You know you must." There was a sob in Winnie's voice. She was sick, she said to herself. That was why she wanted to be loved.