His tone was full of contempt, but Jane and Anthea were too tired and desperate to care; even being ‘out of it’, which at other times they could not have borne, now seemed quite a comfort. They snuggled down in the sofa blanket, and Cyril threw the fur hearthrug over them.
‘Ah, he said, ‘that’s all women are fit for—to keep safe and warm, while the men do the work and run dangers and risks and things.’
‘I’m not,’ said Anthea, ‘you know I’m not.’ But Cyril was gone.
It was warm under the blanket and the hearthrug, and Jane snuggled up close to her sister; and Anthea cuddled Jane closely and kindly, and in a sort of dream they heard the rise of a wave of mewing as Robert opened the door of the nursery. They heard the booted search for baskets in the back kitchen. They heard the side door open and close, and they knew that each brother had gone out with at least one cat. Anthea’s last thought was that it would take at least all night to get rid of one hundred and ninety-nine cats by twos. There would be ninety-nine journeys of two cats each, and one cat over.
‘I almost think we might keep the one cat over,’ said Anthea. ‘I don’t seem to care for cats just now, but I daresay I shall again some day.’ And she fell asleep. Jane also was sleeping.
It was Jane who awoke with a start, to find Anthea still asleep. As, in the act of awakening, she kicked her sister, she wondered idly why they should have gone to bed in their boots; but the next moment she remembered where they were.
There was a sound of muffled, shuffled feet on the stairs. Like the heroine of the classic poem, Jane ‘thought it was the boys’, and as she felt quite wide awake, and not nearly so tired as before, she crept gently from Anthea’s side and followed the footsteps. They went down into the basement; the cats, who seemed to have fallen into the sleep of exhaustion, awoke at the 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.