“I wish you wouldn’t call your mother ‘Max.’”
“Why not?”
“Why do you call her that?”
“Because you do.”
“I don’t have to be respectful to her—I mean——”
“If you call her that, I’m going to,” she said, dismissing that subject.
“You’re being punished now, you know, being sent off to bed in broad daylight.”
“But I like it, when you talk to me.”
He rose promptly.