home she shut him in the storeroom, where she talked to him for an hour. She told him he had done a shameful thing, that boys who behaved like that got a disease and turned black. She said that he was never to go again to Mary Watts' house or even to speak to her. She told him that because he had no father she must be both father and mother to him, and that she must be able to trust him in the hours when she was forced to be at the bakery earning money to feed and clothe them both.
When she had finished, Philip was trembling, though he did not cry, because men didn't behave like babies. He told her he was sorry and promised never to speak to Mary Watts again.
And then she locked him in for an hour to ponder what she had said. He didn't know what it was he had done: he only felt shameful and dirty in a way he had never felt before, and terrified by a fear of turning black like those nigger boys who lived in the filthy houses along the creek by the Mills.
When Emma came back to release him from the storeroom prison, she forgave him and, taking him in her arms, kissed and fondled him for a long time, saying, "And when you're a big boy and grown up, your mother will always be your girl, won't she?"
She seemed so pleasant and so happy, it was almost worth the blind pain to be able to repent and make promises. But he never had the fun of playing again with Mary Watts. He went back to his beloved engines. Sometimes he played ball, and he played well when he chose, for he was a smallish, muscular boy, all nerves, who was good at games; but they never interested him. It was as if he wanted always to
