‘Don’t be a pudding-head,’ Cyril advised. ‘A fat lot of good it would have done if we’d let him see us. No one would have believed a word we said. They’d have thought we were kidding. We did better than let him see us. We asked a boy where he lived and he told us, and we went there, and it’s a little greengrocer’s shop, and we bought some Brazil nuts. Here they are.’ The girls waved away the Brazil nuts with loathing and contempt.
‘Well, we had to buy SOMETHING, and while we were making up our minds what to buy we heard his brother’s missis talking. She said when he came home with all them miaoulers she thought there was more in it than met the eye. But he WOULD go out this morning with the two likeliest of them, one under each arm. She said he sent her out to buy blue ribbon to put round their beastly necks, and she said if he got three months’ hard it was her dying word that he’d got the blue ribbon to thank for it; that, and his own silly thieving ways, taking cats that anybody would know he couldn’t have come by in the way of business, instead of things that wouldn’t have been missed, which Lord knows there are plenty such, and—’
‘Oh, STOP!’ cried Jane. And indeed it was time, for Cyril seemed like a clock that had been wound up, and could not help going on. ‘Where is he now?’
‘At the police-station,’ said Robert, for Cyril was out of breath. ‘The boy told us they’d put him in the cells, and would bring him up before the Beak in the morning. I thought it was a jolly lark last night—getting him to take the cats—but now—’
‘The end of a lark,’ said the Phoenix, ‘is the Beak.’
‘Let’s go to him,’ cried both the girls jumping up. ‘Let’s go and tell the truth. They MUST believe us.’
‘They CAN’T,’ said Cyril. ‘Just think! If any one came to you with such a tale, you couldn’t believe it, however much you tried. We should only mix things up worse for him.’
‘There must be something we could do,’ said Jane, sniffing very much—‘my own dear pet burglar! I can’t bear it. And he was so nice, the way he talked about his father, and how he was going to be so extra honest. Dear Phoenix, you MUST be able to help us. You’re so good and kind and pretty and clever. Do, do tell us what to do.’
The Phoenix rubbed its beak thoughtfully with its claw.
‘You might rescue him,’ it said, ‘and conceal him here, till the law-supporters had forgotten about him.’