When I told Edward all about it, he called me a fool for my pains, and said he could see that the cat was too good a friend to my old charwoman for her to wish to get rid of him. As for Tom’s stealing the tea, it was all a pack of fiddlesticks, and he verily believed that he had never been into the canal at all, and that some fine day I should find old Mother Burgess at the bottom of it. However, he said he would soon put a stop to that game, for he would lock the cat up in the back attic that night, and take it with him to office in his blue bag in the morning; and when he got it down there we should soon find out who was the thief. I told him it was a very good plan, if he would only keep it a secret from Mrs. Burgess, and take care not to go letting the cat out of the bag before he started.
“The Cat did it!”
Accordingly, I took that naughty Tom up stairs with us when we went to bed, and locked him up in the back attic, safe away from the larder. But not a wink of sleep could we get, for the creature kept on scratching and mee-yowing for better than two hours, and then we were nearly driven out of our wits by hearing a tremendous smash, which Edward said was that brute of a Tom flying at the windows, and told me that if I didn’t jump out of bed directly, that they would all be broken before I could say the name of Mr. John Robinson—for that as the cat was clearly going wild, I had better go up and see what I could do to quiet him. As I went up stairs, I was all of a tremble, and couldn’t keep the candle steady for fright, for I could hear the beast flying about the room, and swearing away like a mad thing, as he was. The very moment I opened the door, he flew at me, for all the world as if he had been a young tiger, and dug his claws (which, I can assure my readers, were just like so many darning needles) so deep into me, that I gave a loud scream, and, letting the night-candlestick fall, I flew down stairs in the dark, with the brute clinging fast to my night-dress. When I got to our room, (though I can’t tell how to goodness I was ever able to do so, I’m sure,) the dragon let go his hold, and ran under our bed, where he stopped, spitting and growling away like anything, and with his eyes like two balls of phosphorus, and his tail as large as a Bologna sausage, or my sable boa. Edward took the poker, and I got a broom, and we kept poking and sh—sh—sh—sh—ewing away as hard as we could, for near upon half an hour, expecting every moment that he would spring out upon us again; in fear of which I kept as close as possible behind dear Edward, who, I must say, displayed more courage, under the circumstances, than I ever gave him credit for, and behaved like another Grace Darling in a moment of such imminent peril. Nor was it until he had thrown a whole jugful of water at the cat, that the savage brute shot out of the room, and rushed down stairs.
The next morning I was telling my husband what a nice little boy that was of Mrs. Burgess’s, and how fond he seemed to be of his mother, for he always came to see her every day just before my usual time of going down stairs to see about dinner, when Edward said that he saw what cat took the meat now; so he’d just take old mother Burgess unawares, and very soon show me whether our Tom was the thief or not. So when we went down to breakfast, dear Edward sent Mrs. Burgess out to get a pint of milk for him, and as soon as she had left the house he slipt down stairs and brought me up the basket that she came with upon her arm every morning, and which, he said, he had discovered stowed away in our copper in the back kitchen. Inside the basket we found nearly the whole of the beautiful beef-steak pie that we had scarcely touched for dinner the day before, and a bottle of pickles that had only been used once, and a bar of yellow soap and a bag of flour and two eggs wrapt up in one of our best glass cloths. Then putting them all back again, Edward hid the basket in the plate warmer under our sideboard; and when my lady came in with the milk, he told her that if she would be so good as to bring up the cold beef-steak pie and the pickles, that he thought he could take a mouthful of it, (no one but a man would ever have thought of such a thing.) Without saying a word, down goes the brazen-faced creature and up she comes with the dish in her hands, and scarcely a bit of the pie left in it. “Oh, mum,” she cries, without even so much as the shadow of a blush on her face, “only do just look here, mum! If that thief of a Tom hasn’t been and devoured all this beautiful pie of yours, and he must have knocked down the pickles, for there was eversomuch broken glass on the floor when I came in this morning. Oh, mum! really it is too bad. Upon my word, that cat is so cunning that I really shouldn’t wonder at anything he did next.” On which Edward very cleverly asked her whether she would wonder if, suppose the next thing Tom did was to put a whole beef-steak pie into her own basket, together with some pickles and some soap, and flour, and a glass cloth, and an egg or two, just to send home as a treat to his old friends her children. Then taking the basket from out of the plate warmer, he told her to look at it, adding, that he himself didn’t wonder now at anything the cat had done since she had so kindly brought him to our house, and that really she ought to take care of the animal, for it was clear that Tom was as good as a fortune to her, and she could never want so long as she could get a situation for her cat in the same family as herself. Whereupon the impudent thing put her apron up to her eyes and pretended to cry, saying that she was a poor lone woman, with ten children, and it was a hard matter to find bread for so many mouths, (as if that was any affair of ours.) So Edward gave her the basket with all our things in it, like a stupid, and packed her out of the house as quick as he could, saying, that if she did not keep a sharp look out, she would find some fine morning, that, like her cat, she wasn’t born to be drowned.
Indeed, I was not sorry that we got rid of her on the spot, for Norah was coming in the evening, only I couldn’t, for the life of me, all that day, get over the idea of Edward (a lawyer too!) being silly enough to let the deceitful creature go off with one of our best glass cloths—though I made up my mind to put it down in the housekeeping next week, and make him give me the money for a new one, if I died for it.
CHAPTER VI.
WHICH TREATS OF MY IRISH SERVANT NORAH CONNOR, AND OF THE FEARS I REALLY HAD FOR MY LIFE WHILST SHE WAS WITH ME.
“My heart’s with my Norah, for she is my treasure,
And, sleeping or waking—in sunshine or shade—
From morning till nightfall—from nightfall till morning—
I think of my Norah—my own Irish maid.”
“My Heart’s with my Norah.”