Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/23

 From time to time she had been lucky enough to secure a minnow, which she would bring home triumphantly in a salmon can. She would set the can down on the doorstep, fill it up with fresh water from the cistern and sprinkle the water lavishly with bread crumbs for the minnow's refreshment. Then she would sit with the can in her lap and lovingly watch the little dark, sinuous body slipping about beneath the bread crumbs.

The next morning she would find the little fish that only yesterday had been so dark and graceful and lively, lying inert and white-bellied among the sodden bread crumbs at the top of the water.

Then the pitiless grip of self-accusing horror and remorse would tighten on Judith. It made her leaden-hearted to think that she had been the cause of the death of this happy little creature that had seemed to love its life so well. Anguished in spirit, she would make frantic efforts to revive the minnow by supplying him with fresh water and bread crumbs and restoring him to his living position in the water, valiantly opposing her eager endeavors and warm pity against the iron inexorableness of death. But all in vain! The fresh water and bread crumbs always failed to interest him; and as soon as the anxious fingers that held him back upward were removed, he would turn up his little white, pink-veined belly to the fresh morning sunshine that would never gladden him again. Sadly Judith would own her defeat at last and, sick at heart with a sorrow too deep and real for childish tears, she would bury her hapless victim in a tiny, flower-lined grave, resolved that she would never again be so cruel as to catch a minnow. But in a few days, with the easy forgetfulness of childhood, she would slip away to the creek, salmon can in hand; and the old rapture and the old agony would sway her too eager soul all over again.

It seemed to Judith at such times, as she would sit on the doorstep staring dismally into vacancy, that not only in relation to minnows, but to everything else in life, she was foredoomed to failure—failure disastrous not only to herself but still more