The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [best summer reads .TXT] 📗

while the men do the work and run dangers and risks and things.’

‘I’m not,’ said Anthea, ‘you know I’m not.’ But Cyril was gone.

It was warm under the blanket and the hearthrug, and Jane snuggled up close to her sister; and Anthea cuddled Jane closely and kindly, and in a sort of dream they heard the rise of a wave of mewing as Robert opened the door of the nursery. They heard the booted search for baskets in the back kitchen. They heard the side door open and close, and they knew that each brother had gone out with at least one cat. Anthea’s last thought was that it would take at least all night to get rid of one hundred and ninety-nine cats by twos. There would be ninety-nine journeys of two cats each, and one cat over.

‘I almost think we might keep the one cat over,’ said Anthea. ‘I don’t seem to care for cats just now, but I daresay I shall again some day.’ And she fell asleep. Jane also was sleeping.

It was Jane who awoke with a start, to find Anthea still asleep. As, in the act of awakening, she kicked her sister, she wondered idly why they should have gone to bed in their boots; but the next moment she remembered where they were.

There was a sound of muffled, shuffled feet on the stairs. Like the heroine of the classic poem, Jane ‘thought it was the boys’, and as she felt quite wide awake, and not nearly so tired as before, she crept gently from Anthea’s side and followed the footsteps. They went down into the basement; the cats, who seemed to have fallen into the sleep of exhaustion, awoke at the sound of the approaching footsteps and mewed piteously. Jane was at the foot of the stairs before she saw it was not her brothers whose coming had roused her and the cats, but a burglar. She knew he was a burglar at once, because he wore a fur cap and a red and black charity-check comforter, and he had no business where he was.

If you had been stood in jane’s shoes you would no doubt have run away in them, appealing to the police and neighbours with horrid screams. But Jane knew better. She had read a great many nice stories about burglars, as well as some affecting pieces of poetry, and she knew that no burglar will ever hurt a little girl if he meets her when burgling. Indeed, in all the cases Jane had read of, his burglarishness was almost at once forgotten in the interest he felt in the little girl’s artless prattle. So if Jane hesitated for a moment before addressing the burglar, it was only because she could not at once think of any remark sufficiently prattling and artless to make a beginning with. In the stories and the affecting poetry the child could never speak plainly, though it always looked old enough to in the pictures. And Jane could not make up her mind to lisp and ‘talk baby’, even to a burglar. And while she hesitated he softly opened the nursery door and went in.

Jane followed—just in time to see him sit down flat on the floor, scattering cats as a stone thrown into a pool splashes water.

She closed the door softly and stood there, still wondering whether she COULD bring herself to say, ‘What’s ‘oo doing here, Mithter Wobber?’ and whether any other kind of talk would do.

Then she heard the burglar draw a long breath, and he spoke.

‘It’s a judgement,’ he said, ‘so help me bob if it ain’t. Oh, ‘ere’s a thing to ‘appen to a chap! Makes it come ‘ome to you, don’t it neither? Cats an’ cats an’ cats. There couldn’t be all them cats. Let alone the cow. If she ain’t the moral of the old man’s Daisy. She’s a dream out of when I was a lad—I don’t mind ‘er so much. ‘Ere, Daisy, Daisy?’

The cow turned and looked at him.

‘SHE’S all right,’ he went on. ‘Sort of company, too. Though them above knows how she got into this downstairs parlour. But them cats—oh, take ‘em away, take ‘em away! I’ll chuck the ‘ole show—Oh, take ‘em away.’

‘Burglar,’ said Jane, close behind him, and he started convulsively, and turned on her a blank face, whose pale lips trembled. ‘I can’t take those cats away.’

‘Lor’ lumme!’ exclaimed the man; ‘if ‘ere ain’t another on ‘em. Are you real, miss, or something I’ll wake up from presently?’

‘I am quite real,’ said Jane, relieved to find that a lisp was not needed to make the burglar understand her. ‘And so,’ she added, ‘are the cats.’

‘Then send for the police, send for the police, and I’ll go quiet. If you ain’t no realler than them cats, I’m done, spunchuck—out of time. Send for the police. I’ll go quiet. One thing, there’d not be room for ‘arf them cats in no cell as ever I see.’

He ran his fingers through his hair, which was short, and his eyes wandered wildly round the roomful of cats.

‘Burglar,’ said Jane, kindly and softly, ‘if you didn’t like cats, what did you come here for?’

‘Send for the police,’ was the unfortunate criminal’s only reply. ‘I’d rather you would—honest, I’d rather.’

‘I daren’t,’ said Jane, ‘and besides, I’ve no one to send. I hate the police. I wish he’d never been born.’

‘You’ve a feeling ‘art, miss,’ said the burglar; ‘but them cats is really a little bit too thick.’

‘Look here,’ said Jane, ‘I won’t call the police. And I am quite a real little girl, though I talk older than the kind you’ve met before when you’ve been doing your burglings. And they are real cats—and they want real milk—and—Didn’t you say the cow was like somebody’s Daisy that you used to know?’

‘Wish I may die if she ain’t the very spit of her,’ replied the man.

‘Well, then,’ said Jane—and a thrill of joyful pride ran through her—‘perhaps you know how to milk cows?’

‘Perhaps I does,’ was the burglar’s cautious rejoinder.

‘Then,’ said Jane, ‘if you will ONLY milk ours—you don’t know how we shall always love you.’

The burglar replied that loving was all very well.

‘If those cats only had a good long, wet, thirsty drink of milk,’ Jane went on with eager persuasion, ‘they’d lie down and go to sleep as likely as not, and then the police won’t come back. But if they go on mewing like this he will, and then I don’t know what’ll become of us, or you either.’

This argument seemed to decide the criminal. Jane fetched the wash-bowl from the sink, and he spat on his hands and prepared to milk the cow. At this instant boots were heard on the stairs.

‘It’s all up,’ said the man, desperately, ‘this ‘ere’s a plant. ‘ERE’S the police.’ He made as if to open the window and leap from it.

‘It’s all right, I tell you,’ whispered Jane, in anguish. ‘I’ll say you’re a friend of mine, or the good clergyman called in, or my uncle, or ANYTHING—only do, do, do milk the cow. Oh, DON’T go—oh—oh,