The clerk and his ailing wife were sitting by their fire now, taking tea. A china saucer, containing some milk, had just been put down on the brick floor for the cat, a snarling, enormous yellow animal, but a particularly cherished one by both master and mistress. The cat had got her nose in it, and the old woman was lovingly regarding her, when the door opened about an inch, and the church key came flying in, propelled on to the cat's head and the saucer. The cat started away with a howl, the saucer flew in pieces, and the milk was scattered. In the midst of this the door closed again, and footsteps were heard scampering off.
"Mercy on us!" shrieked the old dame, startled out of her seven senses. "What be that?"
The clerk, recovering his consternation, rose and regarded the damage; the broken saucer, the wasted milk, and the scared cat—the genial animal standing with her back up in the farthest corner.
"That's the way they do it, is it?" he wrathfully cried, as he stooped to pick up the key, a difficult process, from his rheumatic loins. "My gentleman can't bring in the key and hang it up decently, but must shy it in, and do this mischief! I wonder the master lets 'em have the run of the organ! I wouldn't."
"It were that Robbins, I know," said the dame, shaking still.
"It were just the t'other, then—Arkell. Poor pussy! poor tit, tit, tit!"
"Arkell! Why he be always so quiet and perlite!"
"It's a perlite thing to fling the key in upon us after this fashion, ain't it?" growled the clerk.