It was his heaviest day at the
business, and it was upsetting to come home tired and feel her place
beside him at the basement dinner table vacant.
But the women's nods were more knowing than ever, the reassuring
insinuations more and more delicate.
But one night, out of one of those stilly cisterns of darkness that
between two and four are deepest with sleep, Henry was awakened on the
crest of such a blow and yell that he swam up to consciousness in a
ready-made armor of high-napped gooseflesh.
A regrettable thing had happened. Awakened, too, on the high tide of
what must have been a disturbing dream, Mrs. Jett flung out her arm as
if to ward off something. That arm encountered Henry, snoring lightly in
his sleep at her side. But, unfortunately, to that frightened fling of
her arm Henry did not translate himself to her as Henry.
That was a fish lying there beside her! A man-sized fish with its mouth
jerked open to the shape of a gasp and the fillip still through its
enormous body, as if its flanks were uncomfortably dry.
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