The Goldfish and the Watch
On a table in the window there was an opal-blue bowl full of water, with purple iris floating in it, and little bright goldfish, four of them, glinting through it.
Some one had given it that day to the children.
René, the eldest boy, stood by the table watching the goldfish, not thinking of his father at all.
There were minutes in the days when he did not think of his father.
But afterwards it was always the same thing.
He never told any one, because he was seven years old and very shy. No one would have understood. And it was dreadful to him when people did not understand.
It was about his father's watch.
On one thick, hot, velvet-black night, his father had come into his room and waked him with a sudden switching on of the light, and said, "Hop up, old chap, you've got to go and tell your mother to stop crying."
"But, father, why? Will she not stop when you tell her?"
"It is because of me that she cries. I have got to go away."
"Oh, father, why have you got to go away?"
"Because there is war, René. I have got to go and fight. And you have got to stay and look after your mother. Quick now; go to her and say, 'I'm here.'"
"But, father——"
"Here's my watch for you, old chap, and the chain, you see. Mind you take care of it. Don't let it run down. I want to find it right to the minute when I come back. And I want to find your mother well, not crying—and you, my brave little man, taking care of everything for me."
"Like the watch, father?"
"Yes, like the watch."
So he had to take simply terrible care of his father's watch.
If it ran down, if he let it run down, what in the world would not happen?
The battles might be lost to France. His mother might die. And then whatever could he say to his father?
In the days he used to hurry home from everything, to the watch. And in the nights he used to sit up in bed to listen for its ticking. He would stay awake for hours in the nights, afraid it might stop and he not know. Often in the nights he would cry from the tiredness of having to keep awake and listen. But in the days he would forget the watch, sometimes, for a little.
To-day he was happy because of the goldfish.