"Do the children know?" he asked, in a tone, muffled indeed, but quite audible in the children's ears.
Mrs. Day shook her head. "But they must know," she said.
"Know what?" they all asked, alert for news, but suspecting no evil. Even Franky looked up from his toast and marmalade with an inquiring glance. Perhaps the circus was coming, and there would be another procession, with elephants and camels walking through the streets, and unseen but loudly roaring lions dragged in their cages.
"There is bad news, my dears," Mrs. Day began, but very faintly; she clasped her hands upon the edge of the tea-tray, the cups and saucers jingled with their shaking. "Poor papa is in trouble. Tell them," she whispered to the man who stood beside her. "I can't tell them."
Mr. Boult fixed Bessie with the gaze of his slightly protruding eyes of stone-coloured blue. She was the eldest, the only one who could really be said to be grown up. For all his tail coat and smart neckties, Bernard at seventeen was only a boy still.
"What is the matter with papa? Where is papa?" Bessie asked him.
"Just at present—we hope only for a short time until we can bail him out—your papa is in prison," George Boult said.
He had known it would be a blow to them, but he was a man entirely without imagination, and therefore quite incapable of putting himself in another person's place. Rumours had been afloat in the business world. Money, which the jog-trot profession of law alone could never have brought him in, had been spent: more than once the suspicion of what would be the end of his old school-friend had crossed his mind. But that the possibility of such a, to them, hideous calamity, had never presented itself to the man's wife and children he had not considered, nor was he capable of appreciating the sorrow and shame they would suffer by such a disgrace.
He had not a high opinion of William Day's wife and family; they were people who thought the world a place for play rather than hard work, who frequented theatres and concert-rooms, and dances. It was not likely they could feel anything very much. He was unprepared for the effect of his words.
They were young, they were undisciplined, they were quite unused to misfortune. The children met the news of its appearance among them by a loud yell of terrified protest. Mrs. Day had flung herself upon him, grasped him, clung to him.