"It's all up," said the man, desperately. "This 'ere's a plant. 'Ere's the police." He made as if to open the window and leap from it.
"It's all right, I tell you," whispered Jane, in anguish. "I'll say you're a friend of mine, or the good clergyman called in, or my uncle, or anything—only do, do, do milk the cow. Oh, don't go—oh—oh, thank goodness, it's only the boys!"
It was; and their entrance had awakened Anthea, who, with her brothers, now crowded through the doorway. The man looked about him as a rat looks round a trap.
"This is a friend of mine," said Jane. "He's just called in, and he's going to milk the cow for us. Isn't it good and kind of him?"
She winked at the others, and though they did not understand they played up loyally.
"How do?" said Cyril. "Very glad to meet you. Don't let us interrupt the milking."
The burglar began to milk the cow, and the others went to get things to put the milk in, for it was now spurting and foaming in the wash-bowl, and the cats had ceased from mewing and were crowding round the cow, with expressions of hope and anticipation on their whiskered faces.
"We can't get rid of any more cats," said Cyril, as he and his sisters piled a tray high with saucers and soup-plates and platters and pie-dishes; "the police nearly got us as it was. Not the same one—a much stronger sort. He thought it really was a foundling orphan we'd got. If it hadn't been for me throwing the two bags of cat slap in his eye and hauling Robert over a railing, and lying like mice under a laurel bush—well, it's jolly lucky I'm a good shot, that's all. He pranced off when he'd got the cat-bags off his face—thought we'd bolted. And here we are."
The gentle sameishness of the milk swishing into the hand-bowl seemed to have soothed the burglar very much. He went on milking in a sort of happy dream, while the children got a cup and ladled the warm milk out into the pie-dishes and plates, and platters and saucers, and set them down to the music of Persian purrs and lappings.
