The odor was fish, fresh fish.

Cherub's green eyes blazed, his advance became crafty, strategical, determined.

He crept to the Winslow back step, he looked up through the open door, he saw the mackerel upon its plate on the top of the ice-chest.
"If I didn't eat that mackerel," drawled Jed, "who would ?" There was a swoop through the air, a scream from Barbara, a crash-- two crashes, a momentary glimpse of a brindle cat with a mackerel crosswise in its mouth and the ends dragging on the ground, a rattle of claws on the fence.

Then Jed and his visitor were left to gaze upon a broken plate on the floor, an overturned bowl on top of the ice-chest, and a lumpy rivulet of rice pudding trickling to the floor.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" cried Barbara, wringing her hands in consternation.
Jed surveyed the ruin of the "poor man's pudding" and gazed thoughtfully at the top of the fence over which the marauder had disappeared.
"Hum," he mused.

"H-u-u-m.