Frank Belknap Long

“ In the back seat of the creaking car a small, white cottage caught and held the leaden sky glow, its tiny windows gleaming like uncut jewels.
A man of wide and kindly sympathies would have taken delight in the cottage, for though it was a cheap toy it had been built with great respect for the critical eye of childhood. It had eight rooms, a porch trellis, and a little golden weathercock on its roof.
Durkin smiled spitefully, remembering with grim pleasure the child training article in the popular science magazine which had sent him into town in search of an inexpensive doll house. ”

“ But so complex and subtle are childhood identifications that he could also think of himself as still a boy, living with his sister in a cottage just as small, white and beautiful, but set adrift on a pirate-perilous sea remote from his stepfather's mockery. ”

“ Emotional impulses which later in life are filtered through reason and harden into social attitudes remain in children appallingly fluid and direct. A child identifies itself with its toys and it is very easy for a child to see a living, breathing adult human being in a doll which is in reality quite unlike the object of its love—or hate.
Kneeling beside the house, a child Durkin knew nothing about thought it all out for the barest instant, its body oddly bent. ”

“ In every upheaval, no matter how violent, there may well be pockets of erratically channeled calm, regions of security which remain untouched by the turbulence surrounding them. Helen Durkin clung resolutely to an assurance which nothing could shake, and with her conviction that the children would not be harmed went a warm gratefulness that they had turned to her for comfort and protection. ”

“ Durkin muttered. "I saw it when I stopped at the gas station to get my battery checked. I figured it was just heat lightning."
"Robbie saw it too," Robert's mother said. "It means a lot to a boy to know he's living in an age like this. In some ways Robbie is a man already, Will. A boy born a hundred years ago had to remain a child every waking hour. But not Robbie. Robbie was born into a different kind of world."
Her eyes flashed with stubborn pride. "Robbie has real strength inside of him, Will. He'll make a mark for himself in the world. He'll grow up knowing what atomic energy means. ”

“ At least he'd give his stepson a hiding—
Suddenly through the kitchen door he caught a brief glimpse of the children, standing in the yard. They were clinging to their mother, but they were as yet untouched by the violence which was raging all about them.
Durkin's jaw fell open. The violence increased with appalling suddenness, breaking every window in the house, filling the kitchen with blowing dust. ”

“ Instead of an imaginary projection of himself he saw only a ridiculous wooden doll sprawled akimbo on a toy stove.
Shaking with rage, Durkin set the house down, swung about, and gripped his stepson savagely by the wrist.
"Just pretending, were you?" he muttered. "Just waiting for me to come out here, and pat you on the back."
Robert tried to break free. Sick with fear, he tugged and twisted, but Durkin had stronger fingers than a demon, and a deeper understanding of how a frightened boy could make a fool of a man by using his smallness as a cloak.
"You too, Emily," Durkin said. "Come here. ”

“ He had no way of knowing that size is a relative thing, varying with every matter dissolving energy shift in the physical universe, and that a house could be huge in one dimension, his own, and tiny in another, and might even indeed take on the aspect of a house built solely to delight the eye of childhood. ”

“ He stared at Emily, his neck arched in chicken-hawk fashion. "I can't punish you the way I'm going to punish Robbie," he said. "You're too young—just a baby. But when a baby does wrong you've got to be stern. That's kindness."
Durkin bent abruptly, gripped his stepdaughter by the elbow, and lifted her to her feet. "A few hours without your supper in the dark—"
"Mommy!" Emily shrieked. "Mommy, Mommy!"
The kitchen door flew open, and Helen Durkin came running out of the house, her eyes wide with fright. She went up to her husband, and started tugging at his wrists. ”

“ Children are thus exposed to adult censure for acts which they would never dream of performing in a frame of reference removed from the playground and tied in with their socially-consolidated attitudes of respect toward home, school, and parents. ”

“ Especially if they were stepkids, and owed everything to him. Apart from the fact that the article had been against punishing children the way he'd been punished as a kid—and what better way was there?—its ideas were good. ”