The children still kept up their doleful chant.
“I am sure I shall find the naughtiest child in this place,” thought Kitty, “and I should so like to see it. Of course I’ll find my way back. It will be quite easy. Those broken toys will guide me, and those little girls,” she went on, with a twinkle in her eyes, “who are determined to be wretched will still be here. They do not seem inclined to run away.”
Kitty walked on. Certainly it was the most extraordinary place that could be imagined. Through the trees she could see houses. All the windows seemed to have broken panes; fat, cross children looked out; the gardens seemed to be a tangle of thistles and weeds.
More broken toys, more blotted copy-books, more torn picture-books; everywhere weeping, howling, shouting. She could see no one here; probably all were sitting at home crying. It was as if everybody was crying in the place. There were plaintive cries, and angry cries, and lazy, nothing-else-to-do cries. There were cries like old street organs that had lost the beginnings and ends of their tunes, and still went round and round, “piano, crescendo, piano, crescendo,” as the music-books have it. There were cries like bagpipes in a rage, shrill, blustering, furious; there were cries like bagpipes that had caught a cold and were going to sneeze.
Kitty’s blue eyes twinkled as she listened to these weepings. “Those children ought all to be whipped and put to bed,” she said severely. “That would brighten them up.”
Through that chorus of cries she distinguished barks—not jovial, satisfied, inquisitive barks—but snarls, and growls, and angry, frightened yappings. She heard fierce mews and hissings also—every now and then lean cats ran along at full speed, their ears lying back, their eyes full of a wild, hunted light.
“Pussy! pussy!” said Kitty softly as a black creature dashed past her. It whisked up a tree, and glared at her with eyes like green lamps. Kitty thought of the pussy at home, of his sleek fur coat, his comfortable ways.
“Pussy! pussy!” she said again in her most winning voice.
“Hi—ss!” answered the cat, ruffling up all his fur and glaring at her spitefully.