“I’ve ’ad gentlemen, masters at the school, for twelve year come Michaelmas, and some ’ave bin trouble enough, the Lard knows. With their football and ’ockey, and ’ot baths in the middle of the afternoon, and the mud on their flannings something hawful; but a gentleman as surrounded ’imself with cats in sech numbers I never ’ave ’ad nor never won’t again, I ’opes and prays. And although it do go again my conscience to do it of a Sunday, I must ast you, sir, to take a week’s notice from yesterday. For start a fresh week with sech goin’s on, and cats a comin’ by every post as it were, I can’t; no, not if the king ’imself was to ast me on ’is bended knees.”
In vain poor Mr. Neatby pointed out that, far from “surrounding himself” with kittens, they were thrust upon him he knew not by whom or from whence. That he had no intention of keeping any of them if Mrs. Vyner objected, and that it would really be extremely inconvenient for him to have to seek new rooms in the middle of the term.
Mrs. Vyner was implacable. “I’m very upset about it, too, sir,” she answered, more in sorrow than in anger; “for I did think as ’ow I’d got a nice quiet gentleman, you not bein’ given to them ’orrid games as is so dirty, nor wantin’ an over amount of cookin’. But a gentleman as ’eaven appears to rain cats on like it do on you is not for the likes of me nor shan’t be. And though I’m truly sorry as you should be so afflicted, I must ast you to leave my ’ouse, sir, next Saturday as ever is, and that’s my last word.”
It wasn’t, not by a long way; for although Mr. Neatby reasoned, nay, even almost implored Mrs. Vyner to reconsider her decision, she would hardly let him get a word in edgeways, and remained unshaken in her desire that he should vacate her rooms. “’Ow do I know, sir,” she asked again and again, “wot hanimals may be sent you next? My ’eart would be in my mouth every time the door-bell rang.”
Truly, Tod and Peter had planned a fearful vengeance had they only known it. But they did not know it, and their unsatisfied curiosity was their undoing. On Monday morning at the riding school they arranged with Figgins that he was to leave the fifth kitten at Mr. Neatby’s rooms that afternoon, just before afternoon school finished. The despatch of the hamper had been managed by a railway man, a friend of Figgins, whose cart started from a parcel-receiving office close to the riding school, and he delivered the hamper on his evening round.
Directly school came out, the twins decided to rush down to Mr. Neatby’s rooms before lock-up, to ask some frivolous question about a paper he had set, and perhaps by great good luck be present at the unveiling of the end of the sending. All fell out exactly as they had arranged. Figgins took the parcel. Mrs. Vyner received it, addressed as before to “S. S. Neatby, Esq., M.A.” (his real name was “Stuart,” not “Stinks”), carried it grimly into his sitting-room, and laid it on the table. She removed all her own ornaments from the chimneypiece and sideboard, and then went downstairs and brought up all four kittens (poor Mr. Neatby had not yet had time to arrange for their painless destruction), and shut them up in the room to await their owner’s return.
At ten minutes past five he hastened in, trod on one of the kittens as he entered the room, and struck a match to light his lamp. The kitten noisily proclaimed its injury, and the other three expressed their sympathy in similar terms. When he caught sight of the brown-paper parcel on the table he turned pale. The very feel of it was enough, and even before he had torn off the cover he was sure of its contents. Yes, in a common little bird cage was a fat, white kitten, and an uncommonly tight fit she was.
He did not attempt to let her out, though her position was plainly one of extreme discomfort, but stood with the cage in his hands, and the four mewing kittens about his feet, in so universally distrustful a frame of mind that he began to think that Mrs. Vyner herself was in the plot to victimize him.
The door was opened, and his landlady’s voice announced: “Two young gentlemen to see you, sir.”
Fresh colored and handsome, ruddy from their run in the cold evening air, square-shouldered and upstanding, Tod and Peter allowed their two pairs of candid blue eyes to travel from their master’s angry face to his hands, from his hands holding the caged kitten to his feet, where congregated the rest of the sending, and then exclaimed in a chorus of genial astonishment: “Why, sir, what a lot of kittens you keep!”