"And the fish, you say, floating--"
"Chest uppermost," repeated Mrs. Basket, "and dead as dead."
"She _means_, on their backs," her husband explained parenthetically;
"a fashion de parlour, as the French would say. Did you examine the
pond? Heavens, Maria! did you examine the pond?"
"Elihu, you make my flesh creep! Why should I examine the pond?
You don't mean to tell me--"
"My shrimping-net! Don't sit shivering there, Maria, but bring me my
shrimping-net! And a lantern!" Mr. Basket caught up a
Sheffield-plated candle-sconce from the table, motioned the Doctor to
fetch along its fellow, and led the way out to the front garden.
The night outside was windless, but dark as the inside of a hat.
Their candles drew a dewy glimmer from the congregated statuary:
apparitions so ghostly that the Doctor scarcely repressed a cry of
terror. Mr. Basket advanced to the pond and set down his light on
the brink.
"A foot deep . . . only a foot deep," he murmured. "It could not
possibly cover him."
The two goldfish floated as Mrs. Basket had described them.
Mr. Basket, taking the shrimping-net from his wife, who shrank back
at once into darkness, plunged it beneath the water, deep into the
mud. Dr. Hansombody held a sconce aloft to guide him.
The two ladies cowered behind a pedestal supporting the Farnese
Hercules.
For a while nothing was heard in the garden but the splash of water
as Mr.
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