Edward was very good humoured, for once in a way, when he came home to dinner that evening; and it was quite a treat to see him at table, for I never knew him eat so much since we’d been married. I must have helped him three times if I helped him once. As for myself, I do think that it was the sweetest and tenderest leg I ever put my lips to, so that even I was tempted to make so hearty a meal, that I felt quite heavy after dinner, and could scarcely keep my eyes open till tea-time.
When I went down stairs to see about the tea things, (Mrs. Burgess always left immediately after she had cleared away the dinner,) it was very strange I couldn’t find the milk anywhere, though I saw Mrs. Burgess take it in herself; and when I went to get out the butter, if that wasn’t gone as well—a whole half-pound, as I’m a living woman, of the best fresh, at sixteenpence, that I had sent Mrs. Burgess for that very evening! This put me in a nice state, for I had no more fresh in the house, and could give Edward nothing else but salt with his tea, which I knew he couldn’t bear the taste of; though, even when I went to look after that, I could very easily see that some thief had been fingering it into the bargain. I made up my mind, of course, that it was that wretch of a Tom, and I tried to catch him, so that I might rub his nose on the dresser, but the thief was too quick for me, and I could have given it him well, I could.
I thought it best, for the sake of the poor cat, not to say a word to Edward about it; so I made him a round of nice hot toast, and put on it as little salt butter as I possibly could, in the hopes that he wouldn’t discover it. But my husband no sooner put the toast to his mouth, than he declared it was like cart grease; and when I told him about the loss of the milk and fresh butter, he threw it all in my teeth, and I caught it just as I had expected. After which we got to high words again, (drat it,) and I said that I had nothing to do with the bothering milk and butter, and I didn’t see why he should go laying it all on my back in the way he did. What occurred afterwards I will not state; for it is all forgotten, though I cannot say forgiven; for I remember—but never mind, I wont say anything more about it at present.
But my distresses about that brute of a Tom were not to rest here, for what between him and my husband, they led me a very pretty dance I declare, and to as nice a tune as I ever heard in all my life.
In the morning, when I went down stairs to see about dinner, Mrs. Burgess told me that she couldn’t think what on earth could have come to the remainder of our mutton, for it wasn’t to be found anywhere, and she really believed that rogue of a Tom of hers must have walked off with our leg in the night; adding, that she regretted to say that he had been a dreadful thief ever since he was a kitten. But I told her that it couldn’t be the cat, because he had left no bone behind him. Still, as she very wisely observed, most likely he had buried it in the garden, or somewhere about the house; and so indeed it turned out, for Mrs. Burgess brought me the bone the very next day, picked as clean as if a Christian had done it, and which she said she had found in the coal-cellar early that morning.
This loss of the mutton annoyed me very much, for Edward had set his mind upon having the remains of it with pickles for dinner that day. So I was obliged to send Mrs. Burgess out to get a pair of nice soles, and a pound and a quarter of tender beef-steaks, so that I might stew them, (meaning, of course, the steaks, and not the soles.)
In the middle of the day one of Mrs. Burgess’s little boys came to see her, and I was surprised to find what a nice, clean, sharp, intelligent lad he was for his station in life; for his mother said that, young as he was, he could turn his hand to anything. And he couldn’t have left the house above half-an hour, when up Mrs. Burgess came, apparently quite out of breath, and told me that while she was throwing up the cinders on the kitchen fire, that plaguy Tom had jumped on the dresser and galloped off with a whole sole and a large piece of the beef-steak—and that though she ran after him as quick as she could, that he had scampered up the kitchen stairs, and she only got to the garden in time to see him leap right over the wall with the things in his mouth. After a few moments’ deliberation I went to the bedroom closet, and getting Mr. Sk—n—st—n’s little gold headed cane, determined to pay master Tom out well for his sly tricks, (I can’t bear deceit, whether in cats or human beings;) and hiding the stick behind my back, I went out into the garden, and called Puss! Puss! Puss! in my sweetest voice, as if I had got something nice to give him; when lo! and behold, my gentleman, who had found his way back, came marching up from the kitchen as coolly, I declare, as if he had been doing nothing at all, (as indeed I verily believe now the poor thing had not.) When he came within arm’s length of me I gave him one or two such good smacks as he wouldn’t forget in a hurry—though it hurt me a good deal more than it did him, to lay my hands upon the poor dumb animal.
When Edward found it all out, of course he flew into a passion, as usual, and went on in such a way that I was obliged to tell him, even though he was my husband, that he was no man; and he vowed that the animal shouldn’t pass another night under his roof, and that Mother Burgess (as he would call her) should take the brute and drown it that very night. Then he had her up and told her as much; and the poor woman, with tears in her eyes, consented to do so; for, as she very truly said, it was so dreadful to have a thief in the house, that if Tom wasn’t made away with, she was afraid we might get to suspect her—and that after what we had lost, much as it might go against her, she would do as Mr. Sk—n—st—n desired, and see the creature safe at the bottom of the R—g—nt’s C—n—l before she went to bed that night.
When I went down to let the woman in the next morning, I was never so surprised in all my life as to find her fondling the cat, whom she said she had found on the door-step with the very brick-bat tied to his neck which she told me she had put on before throwing him into the water overnight—though how on earth he could ever have managed to have got out of the canal alive and crawled back to our house with that great thing round his neck, is more than I’ve ever been able to comprehend. Mrs. Burgess agreed with me that it was perfectly wonderful; adding, that after all she had put upon him, the poor creature’s life certainly must have been spared by some superior power for some hidden purpose; so she begged of me in a most touching manner to try poor Tom for a few days more, as perhaps it would be a lesson to him and he would go on better for the future. I really hadn’t the heart to refuse, though I determined to keep it a secret from Edward, for I knew that he wouldn’t rest easy in his bed until he had killed the poor animal. So I kept Mrs. Burgess’s Tom unknown to my husband until it was impossible to keep him any longer, for really the things that creature would do, and the articles he would steal, no one would credit. It seemed to be more like the work of a Christian than a dumb animal. If we had a fowl for dinner, and I missed it in the morning, the cat was sure to have taken it;—if the tarts disappeared, the cat had eaten them;—if the flour ran short, the cat had upset it;—if I missed a silver spoon, the cat must have hidden it;—if any of the crockery or glass was broken, the cat had knocked them down;—if the cask of table ale was empty long before its time, why the cat had pulled out the spigot. In fact, nothing was missed that the cat didn’t take, and nothing was broken that the cat didn’t break.
And so things went on until just before my Irish servant came in, when all of a sudden I missed a whole pound packet of Orange Pekoe Tea, which Edward had brought home from the City on purpose for me. This Mrs. Burgess assured me Tom must have taken for the mere sake of taking; for she herself had seen him scampering about the house like a mad thing with a bit of paper in his mouth, and which she had no doubt now was what the tea had been done up in—adding, that it really was quite a mercy that it hadn’t been a five-pound note, as, of course, it would have been all the same to a creature so dishonest as he was.