The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [good inspirational books .txt] 📗

they were sitting on the carpet as close as they could get to each other. But the moment the children entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of moving, mewing pussishness, and the children with one accord climbed to the table, and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked on the wall⁠—and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and piercing.

“This is pretty poor sport,” said Cyril. “What’s the matter with the bounders?”

“I imagine that they are hungry,” said the Phoenix. “If you were to feed them⁠—”

“We haven’t anything to feed them with,” said Anthea in despair, and she stroked the nearest Persian back. “Oh, pussies, do be quiet⁠—we can’t hear ourselves think.”

She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening, “and it would take pounds’ and pounds’ worth of cat’s-meat.”

“Let’s ask the carpet to take them away,” said Robert. But the girls said “No.”

“They are so soft and pussy,” said Jane.

“And valuable,” said Anthea, hastily. “We can sell them for lots and lots of money.”

“Why not send the carpet to get food for them?” suggested the Phoenix, and its golden voice came harsh and cracked with the effort it had to be make to be heard above the increasing fierceness of the Persian mews.

So it was written that the carpet should bring food for 199 Persian cats, and the paper was pinned to the carpet as before.

The carpet seemed to gather itself together, and the cats dropped off it, as raindrops do from your mackintosh when you shake it. And the carpet disappeared.

Unless you have had one-hundred and ninety-nine well-grown Persian cats in one small room, all hungry, and all saying so in unmistakable mews, you can form but a poor idea of the noise that now deafened the children and the Phoenix. The cats did not seem to have been at all properly brought up. They seemed to have no idea of its being a mistake in manners to ask for meals in a strange house⁠—let alone to howl for them⁠—and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed, till the children poked their fingers into their ears and waited in silent agony, wondering why the whole of Camden Town did not come knocking at the door to ask what was the matter, and only hoping that the food for the cats would come before the neighbours did⁠—and before all the secret of the carpet and the Phoenix had to be given away beyond recall to an indignant neighbourhood.

The cats mewed and mewed and twisted their Persian forms in and out and unfolded their Persian tails, and the children and the Phoenix huddled together on the table.

The Phoenix, Robert noticed suddenly, was trembling.

“So many cats,” it said, “and they might not know I was the Phoenix. These accidents happen so quickly. It quite unmans me.”

This was a danger of which the children had not thought.

“Creep in,” cried Robert, opening his jacket.

And the Phoenix crept in⁠—only just in time, for green eyes had glared, pink noses had sniffed, white whiskers had twitched, and as Robert buttoned his coat he disappeared to the waist in a wave of eager grey Persian fur. And on the instant the good carpet slapped itself down on the floor. And it was covered with rats⁠—three hundred and ninety-eight of them, I believe, two for each cat.

“How horrible!” cried Anthea. “Oh, take them away!”

“Take yourself away,” said the Phoenix, “and me.”

“I wish we’d never had a carpet,” said Anthea, in tears.

They hustled and crowded out of the door, and shut it, and locked it. Cyril, with great presence of mind, lit a candle and turned off the gas at the main.

“The rats’ll have a better chance in the dark,” he said.

The mewing had ceased. Everyone listened in breathless silence. We all know that cats eat rats⁠—it is one of the first things we read in our little brown reading books; but all those cats eating all those rats⁠—it wouldn’t bear thinking of.

Suddenly Robert sniffed, in the silence of the dark kitchen, where the only candle was burning all on one side, because of the draught.

“What a funny scent!” he said.

And as he spoke, a lantern flashed its light through the window of the kitchen, a face peered in, and a voice said⁠—

“What’s all this row about? You let me in.”

It was the voice of the police!

Robert tiptoed to the window, and spoke through the pane that had been a little cracked since Cyril accidentally knocked it with a walking-stick when he was playing at balancing it on his nose. (It was after they had been to a circus.)

“What do you mean?” he said. “There’s no row. You listen; everything’s as quiet as quiet.” And indeed it was.

The strange sweet scent grew stronger, and the Phoenix put out its beak.

The policeman hesitated.

“They’re muskrats,” said the Phoenix. “I suppose some cats eat them⁠—but never Persian ones. What a mistake for a well-informed carpet to make! Oh, what a night we’re having!”

“Do go away,” said Robert, nervously. “We’re just going to bed⁠—that’s our bedroom candle; there isn’t any row. Everything’s as quiet as a mouse.”

A wild chorus of mews drowned his words, and with the mews were mingled the shrieks of the muskrats. What had happened? Had the cats tasted them before deciding that they disliked the flavour?

“I’m a-coming in,” said the policeman. “You’ve got a cat shut up there.”

“A cat,” said Cyril. “Oh, my only aunt! A cat!”

“Come in, then,” said Robert. “It’s your own look out. I advise you not. Wait a shake, and I’ll undo the side gate.”

He undid the side gate, and the policeman, very cautiously, came in. And there in the kitchen, by the light of one candle, with the mewing and the screaming going like a dozen steam sirens, twenty waiting on motorcars, and half a hundred squeaking pumps, four agitated voices