It was one of the minutes when a touch made her frantic. "Get away!"
He got away, not through fear, but because she pushed him. He didn't mind that, though the rejection hurt him inside. He stood in the middle of the floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what he could do for her, when she spoke again.
"I've got hardly any money left. I don't know what to do."
It was the first time his attention had been called to finance. He knew there was such a thing as money; he knew it had purchasing value; but he had not known its relation to himself.
"Why don't you get money where you got it before?"
"Because I ain't got a husband to die and leave me another five thousand dollars of insurance."
The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had not known what to think. Having observed that a fundamental social unit was formed of husbands and wives, he had also understood that husbands and wives could, in the terms which were the last to hang over from the lingo of his babyhood, be translated into faddas and muddas. They in turn implied children. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was so composed. The exception to this rule seemed to be himself. Though he had a mudda, he could not remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He had pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone suspected. The effort to link himself up with the human family was far more important to him now than the ways and means of getting cash. Standing pensive, he peered into the blinding light, or the unfathomable darkness, whichever it may be, out of which comes human life.
She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned outward to the stone wall. "Of course she did."
He approached still nearer. "Did I have the same fadda what Gracie had?"
"No, you hadn't." She caught herself up hurriedly, rounding on him in one of her fits of wrath. "Yes, you had."
The inconsistency was evident. "Well, which was it, mudda?"
She jumped to her feet, threateningly. "Now you quit! The next thing you'll be saying is that your name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. Take that, you nasty little brat!"
A smack on the cheek brought the color to his face, and the tears to his eyes. "No, I won't, mudda. I won't say you stole me, or that my name is--" oddly enough he had caught it--"or that my name is Whitelaw. My name is Tom Coburn, and I'm your little boy."