"What," he inquired of Papoulas, "is a person to his father's wife?"
"When she is not his mother?"
"Yes."
"She is then his step-mother," the Greek replied. But he continued to reflect. It was not always the case, in the circles in which he moved, that she was a step-mother. "That is, if his father and mother were married," he added. "If they were not, he is not any relation to her at all."
"Not anything?"
"Not anything."
Peewee got up and moved away disconsolately. His resentment against his father increased. Exactly what marriage had to do with it was not perfectly plain, but his father had stated definitely that he had not married Peewee's mother. Consequently his father had related Peewee to a number of persons who were perhaps somewhat interesting in their way; but by his neglect had left him unrelated to the one person whose relationship Peewee would have liked to claim.
