by E. Nesbit
“This is a friend of mine,” said Jane; “he’s just called in, and he’s going to milk the cow for us. Isn’t it good and kind of him?”
She winked at the others, and though they did not understand they played up loyally.
“How do?” said Cyril, “Very glad to meet you. Don’t let us interrupt the milking.”
“I shall ’ave a ’ead and a ’arf in the morning, and no bloomin’ error,” remarked the burglar; but he began to milk the cow.
Robert was winked at to stay and see that he did not leave off milking or try to escape, and the others went to get things to put the milk in; for it was now spurting and foaming in the wash-bowl, and the cats had ceased from mewing and were crowding round the cow, with expressions of hope and anticipation on their whiskered faces.
“We can’t get rid of any more cats,” said Cyril, as he and his sisters piled a tray high with saucers and soup-plates and platters and pie-dishes, “the police nearly got us as it was. Not the same one—a much stronger sort. He thought it really was a foundling orphan we’d got. If it hadn’t been for me throwing the two bags of cat slap in his eye and hauling Robert over a railing, and lying like mice under a laurel-bush—Well, it’s jolly lucky I’m a good shot, that’s all. He pranced off when he’d got the cat-bags off his face—thought we’d bolted. And here we are.”
The gentle samishness of the milk swishing into the hand-bowl seemed to have soothed the burglar very much. He went on milking in a sort of happy dream, while the children got a cap and ladled the warm milk out into the pie-dishes and plates, and platters and saucers, and set them down to the music of Persian purrs and lappings.
“It makes me think of old times,” said the burglar, smearing his ragged coat-cuff across his eyes—“about the apples in the orchard at home, and the rats at threshing time, and the rabbits and the ferrets, and how pretty it was seeing the pigs killed.”
Finding him in this softened mood, Jane said—
“I wish you’d tell us how you came to choose our house for your burglaring tonight. I am awfully glad you did. You have been so kind. I don’t know what we should have done without you,” she added hastily. “We all love you ever so. Do tell us.”
The others added their affectionate entreaties, and at last the burglar said—
“Well, it’s my first job, and I didn’t expect to be made so welcome, and that’s the truth, young gents and ladies. And I don’t know but what it won’t be my last. For this ’ere cow, she reminds me of my father, and I know ’ow ’e’d ’ave ’ided me if I’d laid ’ands on a ’a’penny as wasn’t my own.”
“I’m sure he would,” Jane agreed kindly; “but what made you come here?”
“Well, miss,” said the burglar, “you know best ’ow you come by them cats, and why you don’t like the police, so I’ll give myself away free, and trust to your noble ’earts. (You’d best bale out a bit, the pan’s getting fullish.) I was a-selling oranges off of my barrow—for I ain’t a burglar by trade, though you ’ave used the name so free—an’ there was a lady bought three ’a’porth off me. An’ while she was a-pickin’ of them out—very careful indeed, and I’m always glad when them sort gets a few over-ripe ones—there was two other ladies talkin’ over the fence. An’ one on ’em said to the other on ’em just like this—
“‘I’ve told both gells to come, and they can doss in with M’ria and Jane, ’cause their boss and his missis is miles away and the kids too. So they can just lock up the ’ouse and leave the gas a-burning, so’s no one won’t know, and get back bright an’ early by ’leven o’clock. And we’ll make a night of it, Mrs Prosser, so we will. I’m just a-going to run out to pop the letter in the post.’ And then the lady what had chosen the three ha’porth so careful, she said: ‘Lor, Mrs Wigson, I wonder at you, and your hands all over suds. This good gentleman’ll slip it into the post for yer, I’ll be bound, seeing I’m a customer of his.’ So they give me the letter, and of course I read the direction what was written on it afore I shoved it into the post. And then when I’d sold my barrowful, I was a-goin’ ’ome with the chink in my pocket, and I’m blowed if some bloomin’ thievin’ beggar didn’t nick the lot whilst I was just a-wettin’ of my whistle, for callin’ of oranges is dry work. Nicked the bloomin’ lot ’e did—and me with not a farden to take ’ome to my brother and his missus.”
“How awful!” said Anthea, with much sympathy.
“Horful indeed, miss, I believe yer,” the burglar rejoined, with deep feeling. “You don’t know her temper when she’s roused. An’ I’m sure I ’ope you never may, neither. And I’d ’ad all my oranges off of ’em. So it came back to me what was wrote on the ongverlope, and I says to myself, ‘Why not, seein’ as I’ve been done myself, and if they keeps two slaveys there must be some pickings?’ An’ so ’ere I am. But them cats, they’ve brought me back to the ways of honestness. Never no more.”
“Look here,” said Cyril, “these cats are very valuable—very indeed. And we will give them all to you, if only you will take them away.”
“I see they’re a breedy lot,” replied the burglar. “But I don’t want no bother with the coppers. Did you come by them honest now? Straight?”
“They are all our very own,” said Anthea, “we wanted them, but the confidement—”
“Consignment,” whispered Cyril, “was larger than we wanted, and they’re an awful bother. If you got your barrow, and some sacks or baskets, your brother’s missus would be awfully pleased. My father says Persian cats are worth pounds and pounds each.”
“Well,” said the burglar—and he was certainly moved by her remarks—“I see you’re in a hole—and I don’t mind lending a helping ’and. I don’t ask ’ow you come by them. But I’ve got a pal—“e’s a mark on cats. I’ll fetch him along, and if he thinks they’d fetch anything above their skins I don’t mind doin’ you a kindness.”
“You won’t go away and never come back,” said Jane, “because I don’t think I could bear that.”
The burglar, quite touched by her emotion, swore sentimentally that, alive or dead, he would come back.
Then he went, and Cyril and Robert sent the girls to bed and sat up to wait for his return. It soon seemed absurd to await him in a state of wakefulness, but his stealthy tap on the window awoke them readily enough. For he did return, with the pal and the barrow and the sacks. The pal approved of the cats, now dormant in Persian repletion, and they were bundled into the sacks, and taken away on the barrow—mewing, indeed, but with mews too sleepy to attract public attention.
“I’m a fence—that’s what I am,” said the burglar gloomily. “I never thought I’d come down to this, and all acause er my kind ’eart.”
Cyril knew that a fence is a receiver of stolen goods, and he replied briskly—
“I give you my sacred the cats aren’t stolen. What do you make the time?”
“I ain’t got the time on me,” said the pal—“but it was just about chucking-out time as I come by the ‘Bull and Gate.’ I shouldn’t wonder if it was nigh upon one now.”
When the cats had been removed, and the boys and the burglar had parted with warm expressions of friendship, there remained only the cow.
“She must stay all night,” said Robert. “Cook’ll have a fit when she sees her.”
“All night?” said Cyril. “Why—it’s tomorrow morning if it’s one. We can have another wish!”
So the carpet was urged, in a hastily written note, to remove the cow to wherever she belonged, and to return to its proper place on the nursery floor. But the cow could not be got to move on to the carpet. So Robert got the clothes line out of the back kitchen, and tied one end very firmly to the cow’s horns, and the other end to a bunched-up corner of the carpet, and said “Fire away.”
And the carpet and cow vanished together, and the boys went to bed, tired out and only t
oo thankful that the evening at last was over.
Next morning the carpet lay calmly in its place, but one corner was very badly torn. It was the corner that the cow had been tied on to.
CHAPTER 9
THE BURGLAR’S BRIDE
The morning after the adventure of the Persian cats, the musk-rats, the common cow, and the uncommon burglar, all the children slept till it was ten o’clock; and then it was only Cyril who woke; but he attended to the others, so that by half past ten every one was ready to help to get breakfast. It was shivery cold, and there was but little in the house that was really worth eating.
Robert had arranged a thoughtful little surprise for the absent servants. He had made a neat and delightful booby trap over the kitchen door, and as soon as they heard the front door click open and knew the servants had come back, all four children hid in the cupboard under the stairs and listened with delight to the entrance—the tumble, the splash, the scuffle, and the remarks of the servants. They heard the cook say it was a judgement on them for leaving the place to itself; she seemed to think that a booby trap was a kind of plant that was quite likely to grow, all by itself, in a dwelling that was left shut up. But the housemaid, more acute, judged that someone must have been in the house—a view confirmed by the sight of the breakfast things on the nursery table.
The cupboard under the stairs was very tight and paraffiny, however, and a silent struggle for a place on top ended in the door bursting open and discharging Jane, who rolled like a football to the feet of the servants.
“Now,” said Cyril, firmly, when the cook’s hysterics had become quieter, and the housemaid had time to say what she thought of them, “don’t you begin jawing us. We aren’t going to stand it. We know too much. You’ll please make an extra special treacle roley for dinner, and we’ll have a tinned tongue.”
“I daresay,” said the housemaid, indignant, still in her outdoor things and with her hat very much on one side. “Don’t you come a-threatening me, Master Cyril, because I won’t stand it, so I tell you. You tell your ma about us being out? Much I care! She’ll be sorry for me when she hears about my dear great-aunt by marriage as brought me up from a child and was a mother to me. She sent for me, she did, she wasn’t expected to last the night, from the spasms going to her legs—and cook was that kind and careful she couldn’t let me go alone, so—”
“Don’t,” said Anthea, in real distress. “You know where liars go to, Eliza—at least if you don’t—”
“Liars indeed!” said Eliza, “I won’t demean myself talking to you.”
“How’s Mrs Wigson?” said Robert, “and did you keep it up last night?”
The mouth of the housemaid fell open.
“Did you doss with Maria or Emily?” asked Cyril.
“How did Mrs Prosser enjoy herself?” asked Jane.
“Forbear,” said Cyril, “they’ve had enough. Whether we tell or not depends on your later life,” he went on, addressing the servants. “If you are decent to us we’ll be decent to you. You’d better make that treacle roley—and if I were you, Eliza, I’d do a little housework and cleaning, just for a change.”
The servants gave in once and for all.
“There’s nothing like firmness,” Cyril went on, when the breakfast things were cleared away and the children were alone in the nursery. “People are always talking of difficulties with servants. It’s quite simple, when you know the way. We can do what we like now and they won’t peach. I think we’ve broken their proud spirit. Let’s go somewhere by carpet.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said the Phoenix, yawning, as it swooped down from its roost on the curtain pole. “I’ve given you one or two hints, but now concealment is at an end, and I see I must speak out.”
It perched on the back of a chair and swayed to and fro, like a parrot on a swing.
“What’s the matter now?” said Anthea. She was not quite so gentle as usual, because she was still weary from the excitement of last night’s cats. “I’m tired of things happening. I shan’t go anywhere on the carpet. I’m going to darn my stockings.”
“Darn!” said the Phoenix, “darn! From those young lips these strange expressions—”
“Mend, then,” said Anthea, “with a needle and wool.”
The Phoenix opened and shut its wings thoughtfully.
“Your stockings,” it said, “are much less important than they now appear to you. But the carpet—look at the bare worn patches, look at the great rent at yonder corner. The carpet has been your faithful friend—your willing servant. How have you requited its devoted service?”
“Dear Phoenix,” Anthea urged, “don’t talk in that horrid lecturing tone. You make me feel as if I’d done something wrong. And really it is a wishing carpet, and we haven’t done anything else to it—only wishes.”
“Only wishes,” repeated the Phoenix, ruffling its neck feathers angrily, “and what sort of wishes? Wishing people to be in a good temper, for instance. What carpet did you ever hear of that had such a wish asked of it? But this noble fabric, on which you trample so recklessly” (every one removed its boots from the carpet and stood on the linoleum), “this carpet never flinched. It did what you asked, but the wear and tear must have been awful. And then last night—I don’t blame you about the cats and the rats, for those were its own choice; but what carpet could stand a heavy cow hanging on to it at one corner?”
“I should think the cats and rats were worse,” said Robert, “look at all their claws.”
“Yes,” said the bird, “eleven thousand nine hundred and forty of them—I daresay you noticed? I should be surprised if these had not left their mark.”
“Good gracious,” said Jane, sitting down suddenly on the floor, and patting the edge of the carpet softly; “do you mean it’s wearing out?”
“Its life with you has not been a luxurious one,” said the Phoenix.
“French mud twice. Sand of sunny shores twice. Soaking in southern seas once. India once. Goodness knows where in Persia once. Musk-rat-land once. And once, wherever the cow came from. Hold your carpet up to the light, and with cautious tenderness, if you please.”
With cautious tenderness the boys held the carpet up to the light; the girls looked, and a shiver of regret ran through them as they saw how those eleven thousand nine hundred and forty claws had run through the carpet. It was full of little holes: there were some large ones, and more than one thin place. At one corner a strip of it was torn, and hung forlornly.
“We must mend it,” said Anthea; “never mind about my stockings. I can sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there’s no time to do them properly. I know it’s awful and no girl would who respected herself, and all that; but the poor dear carpet’s more important than my silly stockings. Let’s go out now this very minute.”
So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor in Kentish Town either. However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture fingering seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that day Jane and Anthea darned and darned and darned. The boys went out for a walk in the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up and down the table—for exercise, as it said—and talked to the industrious girls about their carpet.
“It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from Kidderminster,” it said, “it is a carpet with a past—a Persian past. Do you know that in happier years, when that carpet was the property of caliphs, viziers, kings, and sultans, it never lay on a floor?”
“I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,” Jane interrupted.
“Not of a magic carpet,” said the Phoenix; “why, if it had been allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn’t be much of it left now. No, indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, e
mbroidered with gems of fabulous value. It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings. Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it—except in the way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took their shoes off. And you—”
“Oh, don’t!” said Jane, very near tears. “You know you’d never have been hatched at all if it hadn’t been for mother wanting a carpet for us to walk on.”
“You needn’t have walked so much or so hard!” said the bird, “but come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.”
“Relate away,” said Anthea—“I mean, please do.”
“The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,” began the bird, “had in her cradle been the subject of several enchantments. Her grandmother had been in her day—”
But what in her day Zulieka’s grandmother had been was destined never to be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on each brow were the traces of deep emotion. On Cyril’s pale brow stood beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert was a large black smear.
“What ails ye both?” asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting like that.
“Oh, do shut up, for any sake!” said Cyril, sinking into a chair.
Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly—
“Squirrel doesn’t mean to be a beast. It’s only that the most awful thing has happened, and stories don’t seem to matter so much. Don’t be cross. You won’t be when you’ve heard what’s happened.”
“Well, what has happened?” said the bird, still rather crossly; and Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.