His package was handed him, not by one of the matrons but by a beaming young lady from outside. As she bent to deliver it he had his question ready.
"Please, miss, what's cyanide of potassium?"
He had repeated the words to himself so often during the half hour since first hearing them that he pronounced them distinctly. The young lady laughed.
"Why, I think it's a deadly poison." She turned to the matron nearest her. "What is cyanide of potassium? This dear little boy wants to know."
But the dear little boy had already walked soberly back to his seat. While the other children made merry with their presents he sat with his on his lap, and reflected. Poison was something that killed people. He knew that. In one of the houses where they had lived a woman had taken poison, and two days later he had seen her carried out in a long black box. The impression had remained with him poignantly.
He had no inclination to cry. Tears could bring little relief in this kind of cosmic catastrophe. If his mother had taken poison and was to be carried out in a long black box, everything that had made up his world would have collapsed. He could only wait submissively till the thing he ought to know was told to him.
It was told when the giving of the presents was over, and the children flocked out of the room to get ready for their Christmas supper. Miss Honiton was waiting near the door.
"Come into my office, dear. I want to ask you a few questions."
Miss Honiton's office was a mixture of office and sitting room, in that it had business furniture offset by photographs and knicknacks. Sitting at her desk, she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical acumen.
"I wanted to ask you if besides your mother you have any relations."