I wondered if he had relieved the night watch, or if he could possibly have been on guard himself all that chilly April night.
Mr. Reed did not breakfast with us. I made a point of being cheerful before the children, and their mother was rested and brighter than I had seen her. But more than once I found her staring at me in a puzzled way. She asked me if I had slept.
“I wakened only once,” she said. “I thought I heard a crash of some sort. Did you hear it?”
“What sort of a crash?” I evaded.
The children had forgotten the goldfish for a time. Now they remembered and clamored their news to her.
“Dead?” she said, and looked at me.
“Poisoned,” I explained. “I shall nail the windows over the porte-cochère shut, Mrs. Reed. The boys got out there early this morning and picked up something—bread, I believe. They fed it to the fish and—they are dead.”
All the light went out of her face. She looked tired and harassed as she got up.
“I wanted to nail the window,” she said vaguely, “but Mr. Reed—— Suppose they had eaten that bread, Miss Adams, instead of giving it to the fish!”
The same thought had chilled me with horror. We gazed at each other over the unconscious heads of the children and my heart ached for her. I made a sudden resolution.