BREAKING THE NEWS
There was an instant of stark, palsied silence. The rector, his wife, and McPherson looked at the all-unconscious boy with dumb horror. A horror that for the time crowded out indignation. Frederik, ignorant as he was of any cause for emotion, was struck by the tense bearing of the trio and looked from one to the other with the air of the only man in the room who does not catch a joke's point.
Peter Grimm alone was not affected by Willem's words. He was used to the child's oddities, his alternating high spirits, and dashes of sadness; his old-fashioned phrases and his queer lapses. Grimm broke the ominous silence with an amused chuckle.
"Most people die, sooner or later, Willem," he answered, stroking the boy's shock of soft yellow hair. "I'll live to see you in the business though. And we'll go to dozens of circuses together, too. Don't worry your little head over your Oom Peter's dying. I——"
He paused. The electrified atmosphere generated by the three conspirators began to reach his non-sensitive brain. A quick glance at Mr. Batholommey and a second at the rector's wife confirmed his vague feeling that something was wrong. He turned back to Willem, in time to intercept a blighting scowl of warning the doctor was trying to flash to the boy.
"Willem," asked Grimm gently, "how did you happen to say such a queer thing just now? What made you think I'm going to die?"
A concerted and unintelligible interruption from the trio was voiced too late to prevent Willem's reply.
"He said so," replied the boy, pointing at McPherson.
Then he caught the doctor's annihilating frown. And, simultaneously the rector cried in stern admonition:
"Willem!"