appreciated, were anxious—those of them who knew—to deny his relation to them; his mother's family, as it now appeared, was not only eager to claim the relationship but insisted that he should claim it too. The reason for this, he could not guess. He had no more wish to be related to them than to the Markyns, but he could smell the strawberries.
The younger woman set a chair and helped Peewee up into it. He took a spoon in one dirty hand and bread and butter in the other. It was, he thought, with his mouth full of bread and berries, inexplicable that Mrs. Markyn had called Lampert "rough." A man who gave boys strawberries must, it appeared to him, be classified as kind. And Lampert proceeded to give further evidence of that.
"How'd you like to have strawberries every day?" he asked.
"I'd like it."
"Grandfather," Lampert warned.
"I'd like it, grandfather."
"Even in winter when they have to be grown in hothouses?"
