“You remind me of the times when you were a little boy and used to sit with an ashen face, very thin, with the tears rolling down your cheeks. And when I asked you what was the matter you used to say: ‘I’m heavy.’ You weren’t like an ordinary boy. You seemed to feel things.”
“I seem to feel things now,” he said miserably; “but I don’t know what things they are.” Then, encouraged by the warm interest he felt in her, he added: “But I can’t want not to feel.” And, daring a stroke against the new baleful influence at work in the house, he told her of his recollection of the scene in the bedroom when she had spanked his father.
“Well now,” she said, “to think of your remembering that.”
“It made all the difference,” said he, “all the difference in the world.”
“Oh, you poor mite,” cried his mother; “and you couldn’t see it was in fun?”
“Fun!” He looked incredulous.
“Yes. We were very happy then.”
He pounced eagerly on that.
“Happy? Were you happy? And now? And now?”
That was coming to closer quarters than she had courage for. She sank into indifference.