The Terrible Twins Part 11

When he reached it he found Erebus' bicycle in its corner; and when, after strengthening the trail through the little hanging door with a rag freshly wetted with the drug, he returned to the house, he found that she was already in bed again. He made haste back to bed himself.

It had been their intention to go down to the home before breakfast and put the cats they had attracted to it into hutches. But they slept on till breakfast was ready; and the fragrance of the coffee and bacon lured them straight into the dining-room. After all, as Erebus told the hesitating Terror, there was plenty of time to deal with the new cats, for Aunt Amelia could not reach Little Deeping before eleven o'clock. They could not escape from the home. The Twins therefore devoted their most careful attention to their breakfast with their minds quite at ease.

Then there came a ring at the front door; and still their minds were at ease, for they took it that it was a note or a message from a neighbor.

Then Sarah threw open the dining-room door, said "Please, ma'am, it's Lady Ryehampton"; and their Aunt Amelia stood, large, round and formidable, on the threshold. Behind her stood Miss Hendersyde looking very anxious.

There was a heavy frown on Lady Ryehampton's stern face; and when they rose to welcome her, she greeted them with severe stiffness. To Erebus, the instructor of parrots, she gave only one finger.

Then in deep portentous tones she said: "I came down to pay a surprise visit to your cats' home. I always do. It's the only way I can make sure that the poor dear things are receiving proper treatment." The frown on her face grew rhadamanthine. "And last night I saw your Uncle Maurice at the station--he did not see me--with cats, London cats, in baskets. On the labels of two of the baskets I read the names of well-known London cat-dealers. I do not support a cats' home at Little Deeping for London cats bought at London dealers. Why have they been brought here?"

Sir Maurice opened his mouth to explain; but the Terror was before him:

"It was Uncle Maurice's idea," he said. "He didn't think that there ought only to be kittens in a cats' home. We didn't mind ourselves; and of course, if he puts cats in it, he'll have to subscribe to the home. What we have started it for was kittens--to save them from the awful death of drowning. We wrote and told you. And we've saved quite a lot."

His limpid blue eyes were wells of candor.

Lady Ryehampton uttered a short snort; and her eyes flashed.

"Do you mean to tell me that your Uncle Maurice is fond enough of cats to bring them all the way from London to a cats' home at Deeping? He hates cats, and always has!" she said fiercely.

"Of course, I hate cats," said Sir Maurice with cold severity. "But I hate children's being brought up to be careless a great deal more. A cats' home is not a cats' home unless it has cats in it; and you've been encouraging these children to grow up careless by calling a kittens' home a cats' home. If you will interfere in their up-bringing, you have no right to do your best to get them into careless ways."

Taken aback at suddenly finding herself on the defensive Lady Ryehampton blinked at him somewhat owlishly: "That's all very well,"

she said in a less severe tone. "But is there a kittens' home at all--a kittens' home with kittens in it? That's what I want to know."

"But we wrote and told you how many kittens we had in the cats' home.

You don't think we'd deceive you, Aunt Amelia?" said the Terror in a deeply injured tone and with a deeply injured air.

"There! I told you that if he said he had kittens in it, there would be," said Miss Hendersyde with an air of relief.

"Of course there's a cats' home with kittens in it!" said Mrs.

Dangerfield with some heat. "The Terror wouldn't lie to you!"

"Hyacinth is incapable of deceit!" cried Sir Maurice splendidly.

The Terror did his best to look incapable of deceit; and it was a very good best.

In some confusion Lady Ryehampton began to stammer: "Well, of c-c-c-course, if there's a c-c-cats' home--but Sir Maurice's senseless interference--"

"Senseless interference! Do you call saving children from careless habits senseless interference?" cried Sir Maurice indignantly.

"You had no business to interfere without consulting me," said Lady Ryehampton. Then, with a return of suspicion, she said: "But I want to see this cats' home--now!"

"I'll take you at once," said the Terror quickly, and politely he opened the door.

They all went, Mrs. Dangerfield s.n.a.t.c.hing a hooded cloak, Sir Maurice his hat and coat from pegs in the hall as they went through it. When they came into the paddock their ears became aware of a distant high-pitched din; and the farther they went down it the louder and more horrible grew the din.

Over the broad round face of Lady Ryehampton spread an expression of suspicious bewilderment; Mrs. Dangerfield's beautiful eyes were wide open in an anxious wonder; the piquant face of Erebus was set in a defiant scowl; and Sir Maurice looked almost as anxious as Mrs.

Dangerfield. Only the Terror was serene.

"Surely those brutes I brought haven't got out of their cages," said Sir Maurice.

"Oh, no; those must be visiting cats," said the Terror calmly.

"Visiting cats?" said Lady Ryehampton and Sir Maurice together.

"Yes: we encourage the cats about here to come to the home so that if ever they are left homeless they will know where to come," said the Terror, looking at Lady Ryehampton with eyes that were limpid wells of guilelessness.

"Now that's a very clever idea!" she exclaimed. "I must tell the managers of my other homes about it and see whether they can't do it, too. But what are these cats doing?"

"It sounds as if they were quarreling," said the Terror calmly.

It did sound as if they were quarreling; at the door of the home the din was ear-splitting, excruciating, fiendish. It was as if the voices of all the cats in the county were raised in one piercing battle-song.

The Terror bade his kinsfolk stand clear; then he threw open the door--wide. Cats did not come out. . . . A large ball of cats came out, gyrating swiftly in a haze of flying fur. Ten yards from the door it dissolved into its component parts, and some thirty cats tore, yelling, to the four quarters of the heavens.

After that stupendous battle-song the air seemed thick with silence.

The Terror broke it; he said in a tone of doubting sadness: "I sometimes think it sets a bad example to the kittens."

Sir Maurice turned livid in the grip of some powerful emotion. He walked hurriedly round to the back of the home to conceal it from human ken. There with his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth, he leaned against the wall, and shook and rocked and kicked the irresponsive bricks feebly.

But the serene Terror firmly ushered Lady Ryehampton into the home with an air of modest pride. A little dazed, she entered upon a scene of perfect, if highly-scented, peace. Twenty-three kittens and eight cats sat staring earnestly through bars of their hutches in a dead stillness. Their eyes were very bright. By a kindly provision of nature they had been able, in the darkness, to follow the fortunes of that vociferous fray.

In three minutes Lady Ryehampton had forgotten the battle-song. She was charmed, lost in admiration of the home, of the fatness and healthiness of the blinking kittens, the neatness and the cleanliness.

She gushed enthusiastic approbation. "To think," she cried, "that you have done this yourself! A boy of thirteen!"

"Erebus did quite as much as I did," said the Terror quickly.

"And Wiggins helped a lot. He's a friend of ours," said Erebus no less quickly.

Lady Ryehampton's face softened to Erebus--to Erebus, the instructor of parrots.

Sir Maurice joined them. His eyes were red and moist, as if they had but now been full of tears.

"It's a very creditable piece of work," he said in a tone of warm approval.

Lady Ryehampton looked round the home once more; and her face fell.

She said uneasily: "But you must be heavily in debt."

"In debt?" said the Terror. "Oh, no; we couldn't be. Mother would hate us to be in debt."

"I thought--a cats' home--oh, but I _am_ glad I brought my check-book with me!" cried Lady Ryehampton.

She could not understand why Sir Maurice uttered a short sharp howl.

She did not know that the Terror dug him sharply in the ribs as Erebus kicked him joyfully on the ankle-bone; that they had simultaneously realized that the future of the home, the wages of "overseering," were secure.