"——was larger than we wanted, and they're an awful bother. If you got your barrow and some sacks or baskets we would be awfully pleased. My father says Persian cats are worth pounds and pounds each."
"Well," said the burglar, and he was certainly moved by her remarks, "I see you're in a hole; I've got a pal—I'll fetch him along, and if he thinks they'd fetch anything above their skins, I don't mind doin' you a kindness."
Then he went, and Cyril and Robert sent the girls to bed and sat up to wait for his return. It soon seemed absurd to await him in a state of wakefulness, but his stealthy tap on the window awoke them readily enough when he returned. And he did return, with the pal and the barrow and the sacks. The pal approved of the cats, now dormant in Persian repletion, and they were bundled into the sacks and taken away on the barrow, mewing indeed, but with mews too sleepy to attract public attention.
"THEY WERE BUNDLED INTO THE SACKS."
"I'm a fence, that's what I am," said the burglar, gloomily; "I never thought I'd come down to this and all acause er my kind 'art."
Cyril knew that a fence is a receiver of stolen goods, and he replied, briskly:—
"I give you my word the cats aren't stolen. What do you make the time?"
"I ain't got the time on me," said the pal; "but it was just about chucking-out time as I come by the Bull and Gate. I shouldn't wonder if it was nigh upon one now."
When the cats had been removed and the boys and the burglar had parted with warm expressions of friendship there remained only the cow.