Part 60

'You little silly,' said the Carp, 'that's the hook. Take it.'

'Wait a sec.,' said Kenneth again.

His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran down him from gills to tail.

'If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,' said the Carp.

'Never?' said Kenneth 'Then ... oh! good-bye!' he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the dreadful thought came to him, 'Suppose I don't turn into a boy again? Suppose I keep being a fish?' And then he wished he hadn't. But it was too late to wish that.

Everything grew quite dark, only inside his head there seemed to be a light. There was a wild, rushing, buzzing noise, then something in his head seemed to break and he knew no more.

* * * * *

When presently he knew things again, he was lying on something hard. Was he Kenneth Fish lying on a stone at the bottom of the moat, or Kenneth Boy lying somewhere out of the water? His breathing was all right, so he wasn't a fish out of water or a boy under it.

'He's coming to,' said a voice. The Carp's he thought it was. But next moment he knew it to be the voice of his aunt, and he moved his hand and felt grass in it. He opened his eyes and saw above him the soft gray of the evening sky with a star or two.

'Here's the ring, Aunt,' he said.

* * * * *

The cook had heard a splash and had run out just as the picnic party arrived at the front door. They had all rushed to the moat, and the uncle had pulled Kenneth out with the boat-hook. He had not been in the water more than three minutes, they said. But Kenneth knew better.

They carried him in, very wet he was, and laid him on the breakfast-room sofa, where the aunt with hurried thoughtfulness had spread out the uncle's mackintosh.

'Get some rough towels, Jane,' said the aunt. 'Make haste, do.'

'I got the ring,' said Kenneth.

'Never mind about the ring, dear,' said the aunt, taking his boots off.

'But you said I was a thief and a liar,' Kenneth said feebly, 'and it was in the moat all the time.'

'Mother!' it was Alison who shrieked. 'You didn't say that to him?'

'Of course I didn't,' said the aunt impatiently. She thought she hadn't, but then Kenneth thought she had.

'It was me took the ring,' said Alison, 'and I dropped it. I didn't say I hadn't. I only said I'd rather not say. Oh Mother! poor Kenneth!'

The aunt, without a word, carried Kenneth up to the bath-room and turned on the hot-water tap. The uncle and Ethel followed.

'Why didn't you own up, you sneak?' said Conrad to his sister with withering scorn.

'Sneak,' echoed the stout George.

'I meant to. I was only getting steam up,' sobbed Alison. 'I didn't know. Mother only told us she wasn't pleased with Ken, and so he wasn't to go to the picnic. Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?'

'Sneak!' said her brothers in chorus, and left her to her tears of shame and remorse.

It was Kenneth who next day begged every one to forgive and forget. And as it was his day--rather like a birthday, you know--when no one could refuse him anything, all agreed that the whole affair should be buried in oblivion. Every one was tremendously kind, the aunt more so than any one. But Alison's eyes were still red when in the afternoon they all went fishing once more. And before Kenneth's hook had been two minutes in the water there was a bite, a very big fish, the uncle had to be called from his study to land it.

'Here's a magnificent fellow,' said the uncle. 'Not an ounce less than two pounds, Ken. I'll have it stuffed for you.'

And he held out the fish and Kenneth found himself face to face with the Doyen Carp. There was no mistaking that mouth that opened like a kit-bag, and shut in a sneer like a rhinoceros's. Its eye was most reproachful.