‘What ails ye both?’ asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting like that.
‘Oh, do shut up, for any sake!’ said Cyril, sinking into a chair.
Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly—
‘Squirrel doesn’t mean to be a beast. It’s only that the MOST AWFUL thing has happened, and stories don’t seem to matter so much. Don’t be cross. You won’t be when you’ve heard what’s happened.’
‘Well, what HAS happened?’ said the bird, still rather crossly; and Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.
‘The most awful thing you can possibly think of,’ said Cyril. ‘That nice chap—our own burglar—the police have got him, on suspicion of stolen cats. That’s what his brother’s missis told me.’
‘Oh, begin at the beginning!’ cried Anthea impatiently.
‘Well, then, we went out, and down by where the undertaker’s is, with the china flowers in the window—you know. There was a crowd, and of course we went to have a squint. And it was two bobbies and our burglar between them, and he was being dragged along; and he said, “I tell you them cats was GIVE me. I got ‘em in exchange for me milking a cow in a basement parlour up Camden Town way.”
‘And the people laughed. Beasts! And then one of the policemen said perhaps he could give the name and address of the cow, and he said, no, he couldn’t; but he could take them there if they’d only leave go of his coat collar, and give him a chance to get his breath. And the policeman said he could tell all that to the magistrate in the morning. He didn’t see us, and so we came away.’
‘Oh, Cyril, how COULD you?’ said Anthea.