‘Oh, are you sure?’ asks Susan tragically.
‘I am. The fish swallowed him, but he came up again.’
‘Who gave the emetic?’ asks Dominick; but very properly no one attends to him.
‘Yes; well, what’s after that?’ asks Betty.
‘Well—’ Tommy stares at the earth, and then, with happy inspiration, adds: ‘The nasty witch got him.’
‘Poor old soul!’ says Carew.
‘The witch, Tommy? But—’
‘Yes, the witch’—angrily. ‘An’ then the goat said—’
‘Goat! What goat?’ asks Ella very naturally, considering all things.
‘That goat,’ says Tommy, who really is wonderful. He points his lovely fat thumb down to where, in the distant field, a goat is browsing. His wandering eye had caught it as he vaguely talked, and he had at once embezzled it and twisted it into his imagination.