“We’ve read ‘Mill on the Floss,’ ” said May. Mamma didn’t know about Mr. Lewes, but the girls did, and that got them through the dull parts.
“Quite an authoress, quite an authoress!” Mr. Lacey decided kindly.
“I hardly like to let the girls read her,” said Mamma. “It sounds so fast—a lady calling herself George! Pass the biscuits, please, Martha.”
The conversation fainted again, and again Mr. Lacey leapt forward with restoratives. President Grant and Mr. Home, the Spiritualist, helped him out; and, at the mention of Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Stanley, the Congo rolled through their minds, with variations, for none of them had very clear ideas about it. But Mr. Lacey had to do the work, for Mamma was nervous and the children silent.
He tried lighter topics, and described the ladies of fashion he had seen at Saratoga last month, with hair dressed so high, with the bonnets perched on top such explosions of feathers and flowers, that it seemed as if the gentlemen escorting them should have walked on stilts. “The height of fashion!” cried Mr. Lacey, expecting laughter. For once his lady failed him, murmuring, “Do have some more salad,” but he didn’t mind. Above all things he admired sensibility in Lovely Woman.
“Eat your nice sweetbread, darling,” Mamma urged Victor tenderly, smiling at him. She wanted, oh, she wanted to show them all how much she loved them. The warmth and fragrance of her love poured out over her little boy.
“Victor caught a big fish this morning, for our lunch.”
“Caught a big fish, did he? This big, eh?” Mr. Lacey measured off improbable lengths of air. “What, not that big, young Sir Piscator? Well, I suppose the bigger fish got away—I thought so, I thought so! You’re a true fisherman!” He slapped his napkined knee, and his laughter pealed out. Even Mamma had to laugh a little in spite of Victor’s gloomy face. Mr. Lacey was so droll.
Panic-stricken, she would have stayed with the children all evening. But Mr. Lacey was firm. He wanted to be shown the roses. With Brownie at their heels, they strolled across the grass, and the hemlock hedge that separated the lawn from the garden hid them.
The girls didn’t want to be waiting there on the river porch when Mamma and Mr. Lacey came up from the garden. They took their round straw mats and sat on the grass under the trees in front of the house. The western sky was a sheet of pure gold, and against it the weeping willow by the servants’ cabins across the road was a dark fountain—a fountain springing and falling, springing and falling forever. Somebody from one of the cabins began to play the banjo, languidly, for it was still so hot. The notes spattered out, seemed drops from that fountain pouring up against the golden sky that faded as they watched it, and then grew dark. The music stopped, everything was quiet but the insects that sounded as if they were mechanical insects being wound up for tomorrow.
There was a crunch of steps on the drive—of course, Mamma and Mr. Lacey thought the girls would be on the porch, they were all hiding from each other—and the gentleman’s voice said cheerfully:
“I wonder how it will feel to be Paterfamilias to three lively young ladies and a young hopeful!”
Lily’s nervous giggle escaped before she could cram her hands against her mouth, and the voice sank to a murmur, the steps withdrew. Presently they heard his carriage roll away; and Mamma was standing in the lighted doorway calling: “Children! I want you!”
No need to tell them what had happened, her face was so beautiful and radiant. She was like a great white water-lily that opens softly to show a golden heart, a great white cloud, gold in the sun. Floating, floating, far away from earth. Even the hard knot of pain in Maggie’s breast melted as she hugged Mamma.
“Where’s my Victor?”
“I put him to bed, Mamma. He wasn’t feeling very well.”
“Poor little man! I’ll see if he’s asleep. Girls—”
“Yes, Mamma.”
“Darlings, I do love you so much!”
Victor was awake, a huddle of misery. His head was wet, he was sure he was going to be sick again. Half waking, half sleeping dreams filled the room. Mr. Lacey’s body in its silver-grey suit—but the head was the head of the catfish he caught for Mamma—the dark grey of wet slate, with long fleshy feelers like drooping mustaches—a face as terrifying, as evil, as the Chinese devils in the Foreign Mission book at Mr. Page’s. And from the face came the purring sound that had come from the catfish lying in the bottom of the boat—the frightening purring that had gone on until Jake hit it over the head.
Now the catfish face was laughing at him, the silver-grey sides of Mr. Lacey’s suit were shaking. And over the bed, past the windows, head-down from the ceiling, floated Mamma and the girls, laughing at him, too—
They melted away, he could see his clothes over a chair, the faint glimmer of the looking-glass in the light from the hall. It glimmered like water—water gently rocking the boat in which he sat fishing. Suddenly the red bob in the circle of bright water wobbled and went under—a bite! And there, jerking and leaping at the end of his line, was a tiny Mr. Lacey, grey suit, brown sidewhiskers, geranium buttonhole, streaming wet and jerking on the hook as if he were dancing the Highland fling. Funny little Mr. Lacey! But, lying kicking in the bottom of the boat, he began to grow, to swell, blotting out the river, blotting out the sky; and screaming with laughter he began rocking the boat from side to side—further—further—until the water came pouring in—
Victor wrenched himself back into full consciousness, calling “Mamma!” But no use to call for Mamma—she was in the garden with Mr. Lacey, and Lily and May said
