LITMIR.BIZ

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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 ’elp 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, thank goodness it’s only the boys!’

      It was; and their entrance had awakened Anthea, who, with her brothers, now crowded through the doorway. The man looked about him like a rat looks round a trap.

      ‘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 cup 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

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