A little more of that silent communication, and the rat who had run over Norah's face knew he had only two choices—have his throat slit or get out. He got.
"What do you know?" Philip said that evening. "One of our rats came back."
"By itself?"
"Yeah. I never heard of such a thing. It was one of the experimental ones, so it was smarter than most, though not such an awful lot. I never heard of a rat with homing instinct before. But when we opened up this morning, there he was, sitting in his cage, ready for breakfast."
"Speaking of breakfast, I thought I asked you to buy a big box of oatmeal on your way home yesterday. It's about the only thing in the way of cereal I can manage on that old stove."
"I did buy it. Don't you remember? I left it in the kitchen."
"Well, it wasn't there this morning. All I know is that you're going to have nothing but toast and coffee tomorrow. We seem to be out of eggs, too. And bacon. And I thought we had half a pound left of that cheese, but that's gone too."
"Good Lord, Norah, if you've got that much marketing to do, can't you do it yourself?"
"Sure, if you leave the car. I'm not going to walk all that way and back."
So of course Philip did do the shopping the next day. Besides, Norah had just remembered she had a date at the hairdresser's.