AND THE CATS’ HOME
They watched the retreating figure of Captain Baster till it was lost
to sight among the gorse, in silence. They were glad at his going, but
sorry at the manner of it, since Mrs. Dangerfield looked distressed and
vexed.
Then the vicar said: “There is a good deal to be said for the point of
view of Wiggins, Mrs. Dangerfield. After all, Captain Baster was the
original aggressor.”
“Nevertheless I must apologize for my son’s exploding such an
uncommonly violent bomb at a quiet garden party,” said the higher
mathematician. “I suspect he underrated its effect.”
His tone was apologetic, but there was no excess of contrition in it.
“What I think is that Captain Baster’s notion of humor is catching; and
that it affected Erebus and Wiggins,” said Sir Maurice amiably. “And if
we start apologizing, there will be no end to it. I should have to come
in myself as the maker of the bomb who carelessly left it lying about.”
“It was certainly a happy effort,” said the vicar, smiling. Then he
changed the subject firmly, saying: “We’re going to London next week;
perhaps you could recommend a play to us to go to, Sir Maurice.”
A faint ripple of grateful relaxation ran round the circle and
presently it was clear that in taking himself off Captain Baster had
lifted a wet blanket of quite uncommon thickness from the party. They
were talking easily and freely; and Mrs. Dangerfield and Sir Maurice
were seeing to it that every one, even Mrs. Blenkinsop and Mrs. Morton,
were getting their little chances of shining. The Twins and Wiggins
slipped away; and their elders talked the more at their ease for their
going. In the end the little gathering which Captain Baster had so
nearly crushed, broke up in the best of spirits, all the guests in a
state of amiable satisfaction with Mrs. Dangerfield, themselves and one
another.
After they had gone Sir Maurice and Mrs. Dangerfield discussed the
exploits of Erebus; and he did his best to abate her distress at the
two onslaughts his violent niece had made on a guest. The Terror was
also doing his best in the matter: with unbending firmness he prevented
Erebus, eager to enjoy her uncle’s society, from returning to the house
till it was time to dress for dinner. He wished to give his mother time
to get over the worst of her annoyance.
Thanks to their efforts Mrs. Dangerfield did not rebuke her violent
daughter with any great severity. But even so, Erebus did not receive
these milder rebukes in the proper meek spirit. Unlike the philosophic
Terror, who for the most part accepted his mother’s just rebukes, after
a doubtful exploit, with a disarming sorrowful air, Erebus must always
make out a case for herself; and she did so now.
Displaying an injured air, she took the ground that Captain Baster was
not really a guest on the previous evening, since he was making a
descent on the house uninvited, and therefore he did not come within
the sphere of the laws of hospitality.
“Besides he never behaved like a guest,” she went on in a bitterly
aggrieved tone. “He was always making himself objectionable to every
one—especially to me. And if he was always trying to score off me, I’d
a perfect right to score off him. And anyhow, I wasn’t going to let him
marry you without doing everything I could to stop it. He’d be a
perfectly beastly stepfather—you know he would.”
This was an aspect of the matter Mrs. Dangerfield had no desire to
discuss; and flushing a little, she contented herself with closing the
discussion by telling Erebus not to do it again. She knew that however
bitterly Erebus might protest against a just rebuke, she would take it
sufficiently to heart. She was sure that she would not stone another
guest.
With the departure of Captain Baster peace settled on Colet House; and
Sir Maurice enjoyed very much his three days’ stay. The Twins, though
they were in that condition of subdued vivacity into which they always
fell after a signal exploit that came to their mother’s notice, were
very pleasant companions; and the peaceful life and early hours of
Little Deeping were grateful after the London whirl. Also he had many
talks with his sister on the matter of settling down in life, a course
of action she frequently urged on him.
When he went the Twins felt a certain dulness. It was not acute
boredom; they were preserved from that by the fact that the Terror went
every morning to study the classics with the vicar, and Erebus learned
English and French with her mother. Their afternoon leisure, therefore,
rarely palled on them.
One afternoon, as they came out of the house after lunch, Erebus
suggested that they should begin by ambushing Wiggins. They went,
therefore, toward Mr. Carrington’s house which stood nearly a mile away
on the outskirts of Little Deeping, and watched it from the edge of the
common. They saw their prey in the garden; and he tried their patience
by staying there for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Then he came briskly up the road to the common. Their eyes began to
shine with the expectation of immediate triumph, when, thirty yards
from the common’s edge, in a sudden access of caution, he bolted for
covert and disappeared in the gorse sixty yards away on their left.
They fell noiselessly back, going as quickly as concealment permitted,
to cut him off. They were successful. They caught him crossing an open
space, yelled “Bang!” together; and in accordance with the rules of the
game Wiggins fell to the ground.
They scalped him with yells of such a piercing triumph that the
immemorial oaks for a quarter of a mile round emptied themselves
hastily of the wood-pigeons feeding on their acorns.
Wiggins rose gloomily, gloomily took from his knickerbockers pocket his
tattered and grimy notebook, gloomily made an entry in it, and gloomily
said: “That makes you two games ahead.” Then he spurned the earth and
added: “I’m going to have a bicycle.”
The Twins looked at each other darkly; Erebus scowled, and a faint
frown broke the ineffable serenity of the Terror’s face.
“There’ll be no living with Wiggins now, he’ll be so cocky,” said
Erebus bitterly.
“Oh, no; he won’t,” said the Terror. “But we ought to have bicycles,
too. We want them badly. We never get really far from the village. We
always get stopped on the way—rats, or something.” And his guileless,
dreamy blue eyes swept the distant autumn hills with a look of
yearning.
“There are orchards over there where they don’t know us,” said Erebus
wistfully.
“We _must_ have bicycles. I’ve been thinking so for a long time,” said
the Terror.
“We must have the moon!” said Erebus with cold scorn.
“Bicycles aren’t so far away,” said the Terror sagely.
They moved swiftly across the common. Erebus poured forth a long
monotonous complaint about the lack of bicycles, which, for them, made
this Cosmic All a mere time-honored cheat. With ears impervious to his
sister’s vain lament, the Terror strode on serenely thoughtful,
pondering this pressing problem. Now and again, for obscure but
profound reasons, Wiggins spurned the earth and proceeded by leaps and
bounds.
Possibly it was the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the
Terror to say: “I’ve got a penny. We’ll go and get some bull’s-eyes.”
At any rate the monotonous plaint ceased.
They had returned on their steps across the common, and were nearing
the village, when they met three small boys. One of them carried a
kitten.
Erebus stopped short. “What are you going to do with that kitten, Billy
Beck?” she said.
“We be goin’ to drown ’im in the pond,” said Billy Beck in the
important tones of an executioner.
Erebus sprang; and the kitten was in her hands. “You’re not going to do
anything of the sort, you little beast!” she said.
The round red face of Billy Beck flushed redder with rage and
disappointment, and he howled:
“Gimme my kitty! Mother says she won’t ’ave ’im about the ’ouse, an’ I
could drown ’im.”
“You won’t have him,” said Erebus.
Billy Beck and his little brothers, robbed of their simple joy, burst
into blubbering roar of “It’s ourn! It ain’t yourn! It’s ourn!”
“It isn’t! A kitten isn’t any one’s to drown!” cried Erebus.
The Terror gazed at Erebus and Billy Beck with judicial eyes, the cold
personification of human justice. Erebus edged away from him ready to
fly, should human justice intervene actively. The Terror put his hand
in his pocket and fumbled. He drew out a penny, and looked at it
earnestly. He was weighing the respective merits of justice and
bull’s-eyes.
“Here’s a penny for your kitten. You can buy bull’s-eyes with it,” he
said with a sigh, and held out the coin.
A sudden greed sparkled in Billy Beck’s tearful eyes. “’E’s worth
more’n a penny—a kitty like ’im!” he blubbered.
“Not to drown. It’s all you’ll get,” said the Terror curtly. He tossed
the penny to Billy’s feet, turned on his heel and went back across the
common away from the village. Some of the brightness faded out of the
faces of Erebus and Wiggins.
“I wouldn’t have given him a penny. He was only going to drown the
kitten,” said Erebus in a grudging tone.
“It was his kitten. We couldn’t take it without paying for it,” said
the Terror coldly.
Erebus followed him, cuddling the kitten and talking to it as she went.
Presently Wiggins spurned the earth and said, “There ought to be a home
for kittens nobody wants—and puppies.”
The Terror stopped short, and said: “By Jove! There’s Aunt Amelia!”
Erebus burst into a bitter complaint of the stinginess of Aunt Amelia,
who had more money than all the rest of the family put together, and
yet never rained postal orders on deserving nieces and nephews, but
spent it all on horrid cats’ homes.
“That’s just it,” said the Terror in a tone of considerable animation.
“Come along; I want you to write a letter.”
“I’m not going to write any disgusting letter!” cried Erebus hotly.
“Then you’re not going to get any bicycle. Come on. I’ll look out the
words in the dictionary, and Wiggins can help because, seeing so much
of his father, he’s got into the way of using grammar. It’ll be useful.
Come on!”
They came on, Wiggins, as always, deeply impressed by the importance of
being a helper of the Twins, for they were in their fourteenth year,
and only ten brief wet summers had passed over his own tousled head,
Erebus clamoring to have her suddenly aroused curiosity gratified.
Practise had made the Terror’s ears impervious at will to his sister’s
questions, which were frequent and innumerable. Without a word of
explanation he led the way home; without a word he set her down at the
dining-room table with paper and ink before her, and sat down himself
on the opposite side of it, a dictionary in his hand and Wiggins by his
side.
Then he said coldly: “Now don’t make any blots, or you’ll have to do it
all over again.”
“I never make blots! It’s you that makes blots!” cried Erebus, ruffled.
“Mr. Etheridge says I write ever so much better than you do. Ever so
much better.”
“That’s why you’re writing the letter and not me,” said the Terror
coldly. “Fire away: ‘My dear Aunt Amelia’—I say, Wiggins, what’s the
proper words for ‘awfully keen’?”
“‘Keen’ is ‘interested’—I don’t know how many ‘r’s’ there are in
‘interested’—and ‘awfully’ is an awfully difficult word,” said Wiggins,
pondering.
The Terror looked up “interested” in the dictionary with a laborious
painfulness, and announced triumphantly that there was but a single “r”
in it; then he said, “What’s the right word for ‘awfully,’ Wiggins?
Buck up!”
“‘Tremendously,’” said Wiggins with the air of a successful Columbus.
“That’s it,” said the Terror. “‘My dear Aunt Amelia: I have often heard
that you are tremendously interested in cats’ homes’”—
“I should think you had!” said Erebus.
“Now don’t jabber, please; just stick to the writing,” said the Terror.
“I’ve got to make this letter a corker; and how can I think if you
jabber?”
Erebus made a hideous grimace and bent to her task.
“‘Little Deeping wants a cats’ home awfully’—no: ‘tremendously.’ I like
that word ‘tremendously’; it means something,” said the Terror.
“You’re jabbering yourself now,” said Erebus unpleasantly.
Ruffling his fair hair in the agony of composition, the Terror
continued: “‘The quantity of kittens that are drowned is horrible’—that
ought to fetch her; kittens are so much nicer than cats—‘and I have
been thinking’—Oughtn’t you to put in some stops?”
“I’m putting in stops—lots,” said Erebus contemptuously.
“‘I have been thinking—that if you wanted to have a cats’ home
here’—What’s the right word for ‘running a thing,’ Wiggins?”
Wiggins frowned deeply; a number of his freckles seemed to run into one
another.
“There is a word ‘overseer’—slaves have them,” he said cautiously.
The Terror sought that word painfully in the dictionary, spelled it
out, and continued: “‘I could overseer it for you. I have got my eye on
a building which would suit us tremendously well. But these things cost
money, and it would not be any use starting with less than thirty
pounds’—
“Thirty pounds! My goodness!” cried Erebus; and her eyes opened wide.
“We may as well go the whole hog,” said the Terror philosophically. “Go
on: ‘Or else just as the cats get to be happy and feel it was a real
home—’ What’s the word for ‘bust up,’ Wiggins?”
“Burst up,” said Wiggins without hesitation.
“No, no; not the grammar—the right word! Oh, I know; ‘go bankrupt’—‘it
might go bankrupt. So it you would like to have a cats’ home here and
send me some money, I will start it at once. Your affectionate nephew,
Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield.’ There!” said the Terror with a sigh of
relief.
“But you’ve left me out altogether,” said Erebus in a suddenly
aggrieved tone.
“I should jolly well think I had! You know that ever since you stayed
with Aunt Amelia, and taught her parrot to say ‘Dam,’ she won’t have
anything to do with you,” said the Terror firmly.
“There’s no pleasing some people,” said Erebus mournfully. “When I went
there the silly old parrot couldn’t say a thing; and when I came away,
he could say ‘Dam! Dam! Dam!’ from morning till night without making a
mistake.”
“It’s a word people don’t like,” said the Terror.
“Well, I and the parrot meant a dam in a river. I told Aunt Amelia so,”
said Erebus firmly.
“She might not believe you; she doesn’t know how truthfully we’ve been
brought up,” said the Terror. “Go on; sign my name to the letter.”
“That’s forgery. You ought to sign your name yourself,” said Erebus.
“No; you write my name better than I do; and it will go better with the
rest of the letter. Sign away,” said the Terror firmly.
Erebus signed away, and then she said: “But what good’s the money going
to be to us, if we’ve got to spend it on a silly old cats’ home? It
only means a lot of trouble.”
The guilelessness deepened and deepened on the Terror’s face. “Well,
you see, there aren’t many cats in Little Deeping—not enough to fill a
cats’ home decently,” he said slowly. “We should have to have bicycles
to collect them—from Great Deeping, and Muttle Deeping, and farther
off.”
Erebus gasped; and the light of understanding illumined her charming
face, as she cried in a tone of awe not untinctured with admiration:
“Well, you do think of things!”
“I have to,” said the Terror. “If I didn’t we should never have a
single thing.”
The Terror procured a stamp from Mrs. Dangerfield. He did not tell her
of the splendid scheme he was promoting; he only said that he had
thought he would write to Aunt Amelia. Mrs. Dangerfield was pleased
with him for his thought: she wished him to stand well with his
great-aunt, since she was a rich woman without children of her own. She
did not, indeed, suggest that the letter should be shown to her, though
she suspected that it contained some artless request. She thought it
better that the Terror should write to his great-aunt to make requests
rather than not write at all.
The letter posted, the Twins resumed the somewhat jerky tenor of their
lives. Erebus was full of speculations about the changes in their lives
those bicycles would bring about; she would pause in the very middle of
some important enterprise to discuss the rides they would take on them,
the orchards that those machines would bring within their reach. But
the Terror would have none of it; his calm philosophic mind forbade him
to discuss his chickens before they were hatched.
Since her philanthropy was confined entirely to cats, it is not
remarkable that philanthropy, and not intelligence, was the chief
characteristic of Lady Ryehampton. As the purport of her great-nephew’s
letter slowly penetrated her mind, a broad and beaming smile of
gratification spread slowly over her large round face; and as she
handed the letter to Miss Hendersyde, her companion, she cried in
unctuous tones: “The dear boy! So young, but already enthusiastic about
great things!”
Miss Hendersyde looked at her employer patiently; she foresaw that she
was going to have to struggle with her to save her from being once more
victimized. She had come to suspect anything that stirred Lady
Ryehampton to a noble phrase. Her eyes brightened with humorous
appreciation as she read the letter of Erebus; and when she came to the
end of it she opened her mouth to point out that Little Deeping was one
of the last places in England to need a cats’ home. Then she bethought
herself of the whole situation, shut her mouth with a little click, and
her face went blank.
Then she breathed a short silent prayer for forgiveness, smiled and
said warmly: “It’s really wonderful. You must have inspired him with
that enthusiasm yourself.”
“I suppose I must,” said Lady Ryehampton with an air of satisfaction.
“And I must be careful not to discourage him.”
Miss Hendersyde thought of the Terror’s face, his charming sympathetic
manners, and his darned knickerbockers. It was only right that some of
Lady Ryehampton’s money should go to him; indeed that money ought to be
educating him at a good school. It was monstrous that the great bulk of
it should be spent on cats; cats were all very well but human beings
came first. And the Terror was such an attractive human being.
“Yes, it is a dreadful thing to discourage enthusiasm,” she said
gravely.
Lady Ryehampton proceeded to discuss the question whether a cats’ home
could be properly started with thirty pounds, whether she had not
better send fifty. Miss Hendersyde made her conscience quite
comfortable by compromising: she said that she thought thirty was
enough to begin with; that if more were needful, Lady Ryehampton could
give it later. Lady Ryehampton accepted the suggestion.
Having set her employer’s hand to the plow, Miss Hendersyde saw to it
that she did not draw it back. Lady Ryehampton would spend money on
cats, but she could not be hurried in the spending of it. But Miss
Hendersyde kept referring to the Terror’s enterprise all that day and
the next morning, with the result that on the next afternoon Lady
Ryehampton signed the check for thirty pounds. At Miss Hendersyde’s
suggestion she drew the money in cash; and Miss Hendersyde turned it
into postal orders, for there is no bank at Little Deeping.
On the third morning the registered letter reached Colet House. The
excited Erebus, who had been watching for the postman, received it from
him, signed the receipt with trembling fingers, and dashed off with the
precious packet to the Terror in the orchard.
The Terror took it from her with flawless serenity and opened it
slowly.
But as he counted the postal orders, a faint flush covered his face;
and he said in a somewhat breathless tone: “Thirty pounds—well!”
Erebus executed a short but Bacchic dance which she invented on the
spur of that marvelous moment.
“It’s splendid—splendid!” she cried. “It’s the best thing you ever
thought of!”
The Terror put the postal orders back into the envelope, and put the
envelope into the breast pocket of his coat. A frown of the most
thoughtful consideration furrowed his brow. Then he said firmly: “The
first thing, to do is to get the bicycles. If once we’ve got them, no
one will take them away from us.”
“Of course they won’t,” said Erebus, with eager acceptance of his idea.
The breakfast-bell rang; and they went into the house, Erebus spurning
the earth as she went, in the very manner of Wiggins.
In the middle of breakfast the Terror said in a casual tone and with a
casual air, as if he was not greatly eager for the boon: “May we have
the cow-house for our very own, Mum?”
“Oh, Terror! Surely you don’t want to keep ferrets!” cried Mrs.
Dangerfield, who lived in fear of the Terror’s developing that
inevitable boyish taste.
“Oh, no; but if we had the cow-house to do what we liked with, I think
we could make a little pocket-money out of it.”
“I am afraid you’re growing terribly mercenary,” said his mother; then
she added with a sigh: “But I don’t wonder at it, seeing how hard up
you always are. You can have the cow-house. It’s right at the end of
the paddock—well away from the house—so that I don’t see that you can
do any harm with it whatever you do. But how are you going to make
pocket-money out of it?”
“Oh, I haven’t got it all worked out yet,” said the Terror quickly.
“But we’ll tell you all about it when we have. Thanks ever so much for
the cow-house.”
For the rest of breakfast he left the conversation to Erebus.
The Terror was blessed with a masterly prudence uncommon indeed in a
boy of his years. He changed but one of the six postal orders at Little
Deeping—that would make talk enough—and then, having begged a holiday
from the vicar, he took the train to Rowington, their market town, ten
miles away, taking Erebus with him. There he changed three more postal
orders; and then the Twins took their way to the bicycle shop, with
hearts that beat high.
The Terror set about the purchase in a very careful leisurely way
which, in any one else, would have exasperated the highly strung Erebus
to the very limits of endurance; but where the Terror was concerned she
had long ago learned the futility of exasperation. He began by an
exhaustive examination of every make of bicycle in the shop; and he
made it with a thoroughness that worried the eager bicycle-seller, one
of those smart young men who pamper a chin’s passion for receding by
letting a straggly beard try to cover it, till his nerves were all on
edge. Then the Terror, drawing a handful of sovereigns out of his
pocket and gazing at them lovingly, seemed unable to make up his mind
whether to buy two bicycles or one; and the bearded but chinless young
man perspired with his eloquent efforts to demonstrate the advantage of
buying two. He was quite weary when the persuaded Terror proceeded to
develop the point that there must be a considerable reduction in price
to the buyer of two bicycles. Then he made his offer: he would give
fourteen pounds for two eight-pound-ten bicycles. His serenity was
quite unruffled by the seller’s furious protests. Then the real
struggle began. The Terror came out of it with two bicycles, two lamps,
two bells and two baskets of a size to hold a cat; the seller came out
of it with fifteen pounds; and the triumphant Twins wheeled their
machines out of the shop.
The Terror stood still and looked thoughtfully up and down High Street.
Then he said: “We’ve saved the cats’ home quite two pounds.”
“Yes,” said Erebus.
“And it’s made me awfully hungry and thirsty doing it,” said the
Terror.
“It must have—arguing like that,” said Erebus quickly; and her eyes
brightened as she caught his drift.
“Well, I think the home ought to pay for refreshment. It’s a long ride
home,” said the Terror.
“Of course it ought,” said Erebus with decision.
Without more ado they wheeled their bicycles down the street to a
confectioner’s shop, propped them up carefully against the curb, and
entered the shop with an important moneyed air.
At the end of his fourth jam tart the Terror said: “Of course overseers
have a salary.”
“Of course they do,” said Erebus.
“That settles the matter of pocket-money,” said the Terror. “We’ll have
sixpence a week each.”
“Only sixpence?” said Erebus in a tone of the liveliest surprise.
“Well, you see, there are the bicycles. I don’t think we can make it
more than sixpence. And I tell you what: we shall have to keep
accounts. I’ll buy an account-book. You’re very good at
arithmetic—you’ll like keeping accounts,” said the Terror suavely.
Since her mouth was full of luscious jam tart, Erebus did not feel that
it would be delicate at that moment to protest. Therefore on leaving
the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature
prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the
stationer’s he went to an ironmonger’s and bought a saw, a brace, a
gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long
needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had
learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After
their visit to the confectioner’s they rode rather sluggishly.
They were not hungry, far from it, at the moment; but half-way home the
Terror turned out of the main road into the lanes, and they paused at a
quiet orchard, in a lovely unguarded spot, and filled the cat-basket on
Erebus’ bicycle with excellent apples. The tools had been packed into
the Terror’s basket. They did not disturb the farmer’s wife at the busy
dinner-hour; the Terror threw the apples over the orchard hedge to
Erebus.
As he remembered his bicycle he said dreamily: “I shouldn’t wonder if
these bicycles didn’t pay for themselves in time.”
“I said there were orchards out here where they didn’t know us,” said
Erebus, biting into a Ribston pippin.
They reached home in time for lunch and locked away their bicycles in
the cow-house. At lunch they were reticent about their triumphs of the
morning.
After lunch they went to the cow-house and took measurements. It had
long been unoccupied by cows and needed little cleaning. It was quite
suitable to their purpose, a brick building with a slate roof and of a
size to hold two cows. The measurements made, they went, with an
important moneyed air, down to the village carpenter, the only timber
merchant in the neighborhood, and bought planks from him. There was
some discussion before his idea about the price of planks and that of
the Terror were in exact accord; and as he took the money he said, with
some ruefulness, that he was a believer in small profits and quick
returns. Since immediate delivery was part of the bargain, he forthwith
put the planks on a hand-cart and wheeled them up to Colet House. The
Twins, eager to be at work, helped him.
For the rest of the day the Terror applied his indisputable
constructive genius to the creation of cat-hutches. That evening Erebus
wrote his warm letter of thanks to Lady Ryehampton.
The next morning, with a womanly disregard of obligation, Erebus
proposed that they should forthwith mount their bicycles and sally
forth on a splendid foray. The Terror would not hear of it.
“No,” he said firmly. “We’re going to get the cats’ home finished
before we use those bicycles at all. Then nobody can complain.”
He lost no time setting to work on it, and worked till it was time to
go down to the vicarage for his morning’s lessons with the vicar. He
set to work again as soon as he returned; he worked all the afternoon;
and he saw to it that Erebus worked, too.
In the middle of the afternoon Wiggins came. He had spent a fruitless
hour lying in wait on the common to scalp the Twins as they sallied
forth into the world, and then had come to see what had kept them
within their borders. He was deeply impressed by the sight of the
bicycles, but not greatly surprised: his estimation of the powers of
his friends was too high for any of their exploits to surprise him
greatly. But he was somewhat aggrieved that they should have obtained
their bicycles before he had obtained his. None the less he helped them
construct the cats’ home with enthusiasm.
For three strenuous days they persisted in their untiring effort. So
much sustained carpentering was hard on their hands; many small pieces
were chipped out of them. But their spirits never flagged; and by
sunset on the third day they had constructed accommodation for thirty
cats. It may be that the wooden bars of the hutches were not all of the
same breadth, but at any rate they were all of the same thickness: and
it would be a slim cat, indeed, that would squirm through them.
At sunset on the third day the exultant trio gazed round the
transformed cow-house with shining triumphant eyes; then Erebus said
firmly: “What we want now is cats.”