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delight—“The bees, Daddy, the bees!” Why, the dear, she thought, she wandered up there all by herself, and warm, shivery, she arose, her arms outstretched— why, my dearest baby— but Milton was running from his chair, intercepting her, tossing Peyton high in the air as the small prim skirt blossomed like a gaudy flower against the sky. And so, nuzzling his face against her neck, he bore her toward the porch, both of them giggling, both of them buzzing like bees.
    Helen sat down again. The coffee on her breakfast tray was suddenly without taste, and for a moment she felt a helpless frustration. Milton was buzzing and Peyton was buzzing and her brother and her sister-in-law and the morose Polish cook converged all at once upon the veranda with mild fond murmurings of admiration and approval.
    “Did you get bit?” Marion said.
    “Come here to me, beautiful,” Edward said, squatting down, and Peyton started to rush toward her uncle, but Helen heard herself speaking, without anger, calmly. “Come here, Peyton, let me brush you off. You shouldn’t go up there by yourself. I’ve told you.”
    Reluctantly Peyton turned, sulking, toward her. “But, Mama.”
    “Come here, now.”
    “Go to Mama and let her fix your hair,” Milton said. He was wearing white flannels, looking very handsome. “Go to Mama. Then you and Uncle Eddie and I will go see about the bees.”
    Peyton stood stiffly against her as Helen brushed and combed and groomed.
    “It won’t hurt her to go up there, dear,” Milton said. “There’s a fence, you know.”
    “I know,” she said, lightly and without conviction. She felt vaguely foolish, and a hot embarrassed flush rose to her cheeks. Curiously she had the sense that they were all watching her, and with a small forced laugh she said, “Mama’s darling got awfully dirty, didn’t she?”
    Peyton struggled and squirmed, reaching for Milton. “Daddy, let’s go see the bees. Now, Daddy. Let’s go see the bees.” She held her tightly for a moment—“Keep still,” she whispered—but she relaxed her grip and Peyton tugged away as Edward said: “There! I’d love to go for a walk with such a pretty girl.”
    Helen turned back toward the table and, with a quick shrug, pulled her coat up about her shoulders. She felt chilled and abruptly, terribly empty. The voices faded up the hill behind her. The Polish woman hovered near with a broom, between hoarse Polish wheezes muttering, “That child is spoiled already, Missus Helen. You and him spoil her something awful. You should take care.”
    “Yes.”
    “She grow up to be a lot of trouble. Me, I got five what got their bottoms spanked most every day.”
    “Yes.”
    “I got no trouble with them, neither.”
    “No.”
    “She’s a nice little girl, though. Pretty. You got a pretty daughter, Missus Helen. Me, I love children.”
    It’s not I, not I who spoil her —but the feeling she had, disappointment, bitterness, whatever it was, had passed away. She drank the rest of her coffee. Suddenly she wished she were back in Virginia, but that feeling, too, disappeared. How silly, she thought, how silly to imagine that—— How silly. Oh, how silly and absurd. Why, last night she crawled over against me on the bed—“Mama,” she said, “do you love me?” And I said and she said … oh, how silly, selfish.
    Maudie. But of course.
    She got up quickly, spilling cream; walked past her sister-in-law picking tulips in the garden; hurried through the house with an anticipation that she did not and could not deny but, rather, exulted in, rushing up the muffled, carpeted stairs in a wishful greedy suspense like a child at Christmas and then, halting, tiptoed onto the shadowed sunporch where Maudie sat alone, her braced leg outstretched on a stool. Helen crushed the child into her arms.
    “There, there, Maudie,” Helen whispered, “Mama’s here. There, Maudie-poo.” My first, my dearest. She sat down with the child and soon contentment began