They were young, they were undisciplined, they were quite unused to misfortune. The children met the news of its appearance among them by a loud yell of terrified protest. Mrs. Day had flung herself upon him, grasped him, clung to him.
"Not William! Not my husband! No! No! No!" she shrieked.
"I thought you knew! I thought you knew!" George Boult said. The woman hurt him by her grip upon his arms; what a din was in his ears!
Franky was screaming too. He had got down from the table and rushed round to his younger sister, who, white, and shaking like a leaf, took the child in her arms. Bernard had risen, ashen-faced, staring. "It isn't true!" he shouted savagely at his father's traducer. "It's a lie!"
"Didn't you know?" George Boult kept saying to the poor woman who was shaking him by the force of her trembling as she clung to him. "I would have prepared you--I thought you knew."
"I thought it was bankruptcy," she got out between her chattering teeth. "I didn't know it was--disgrace. Are you sure? Quite sure?"
"Quite. There is not the shadow of a chance it is not true. A police officer brought me a message from him from the station-house last night."
She let go his arms, and sank into her chair again; and Franky, who could find no comfort in Deleah's embrace, left her, and still screaming his terrified "Papa! papa! papa!" flew to hang upon his mother's neck.
Deleah crept round to Bernard. "Oh, Bernard, what can we do?" she said. "What ought we to do?"
Bernard, who had sunk into his chair, only laid his arms upon the table, his head upon his arms, and sobbed.
George Boult thought they were taking it very badly. "This comes of too much pleasuring," he told himself. He looked round upon the miserable group, feeling shocked and helpless. He had gone there to see if he could be of use. How was it possible to help people who behaved like this! He was a widower, but had no children of his own. If he had been more fortunate in that respect what serious-minded, well-conducted boys and girls they would have been: not squeaking over misfortune, but standing up to it when it came; looking about them, open-eyed, for ways of making money, marrying money, and getting on. The children of William Day and their mother were acting like a set of lunatics only fit for Bedlam.