The clock struck twelve, and he remembered with a start that both his landlady and Jemima would certainly be in bed.
What was to be done with the kittens?
He was far too kind-hearted to turn them out of doors on a cold November night. They were really uncommonly pretty little beasts, and as he watched their gambles he found himself quoting:
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play,
and then realized that they had no business to be playing at all at that time of night, and that he certainly wanted to go to bed.
He really was a much tried man that night. First, he had to catch the kittens and put them in the hamper, and as fast as he put one in, the other jumped out. This took some time. Then he carried the hamper up to bed with him, the kittens making frantic efforts to escape the while. And when at last he did get to bed, he had to get up again to let them out of the hamper, for they made such a frightful din no mortal could sleep. They finally elected to settle down on Mr. Neatby’s bed, and in the morning one of them ungratefully scratched his nose because he happened to move when the kitten in question chose to walk over his face.
When at last he arose from very broken slumbers, the black kitten upset the shaving water and scalded its foot, and made a dreadful uproar, and the tortoiseshell, while investigating the mantelpiece, upset and threw into the grate a blue vase belonging to Mrs. Vyner.
In chapel on Sunday morning, Tod and Peter noted gleefully the long scratch on “old Stinks’” nose (“Stinks” being, I regret to say, the name by which Mr. Neatby was known among his pupils). And curiosity as to how he was getting on with his rapidly increasing family of cats consumed them. In the afternoon they walked up and down the road outside his lodgings for nearly an hour, but nothing did they discover; for Mrs. Vyner’s windows were shrouded by white curtains, no one went in or out of the house, and all their loitering was not rewarded by so much as hearing a distant mew.
The fact was that Mr. Neatby had gone for a long walk to try and work off his irritation. That morning, while he was still at breakfast, Mrs. Vyner had appeared in his sitting-room, and somewhat stormily informed him that her “’ouse was not a ’ome for lost cats, nor never ’ad been.” And she concluded her harangue as follows: