"She says, 'Sara, shove the goldfish,' so I shoved 'em! Hard! Then, smash, bang, all gone!"
It was a dramatic performance, but while Tom was saying that a household should be run so that strange little girls wouldn't come in unbidden, Alice had an unconvinced feeling about this child.
"Where's Robert?" she asked.
"Off cwying somewheres," said his sister callously. Alice found him under his white iron bed.
"I didn't mean to kill them," he sobbed; "I didn't mean to. I just lifted it up to put it out of the sun and it slipped." But Sara, who had followed her mother and father, cried out hotly,
"You didn't do it, Robert Marcey! I did it. I broke 'em!"
"She's trying to shield her brother," said Tom. Alice gathered her son to her.
"They're not dead," she soothed. "Who was the little girl playing with you?"
"There wasn't any," said Robert. "Just Sara and me. It slipped, and when it went smash she laughed and jumped up and down. And we heard you coming and hid." But here the incomprehensible Sara gave way to temper. She wanted to have broken the bowl. She insisted on it with tears and rage.
Tom wanted to believe she did this to shield Robert. But Alice inclined to the belief, and Robert did too, that she thought smashing goldfish bowls rather a fine achievement.
Within the next day or two Sara piled up more evidence against herself. She loved adornment and it was hard to keep her from taking her mother's things.
Tom and Alice were sitting in the library next Sunday and Sara ran into the room. She was not looking for them, as she showed by clapping her hand over an old-
