第46章

With cautious tenderness the boys held the carpet up to the light;the girls looked, and a shiver of regret ran through them as they saw how those eleven thoousand nine hundred and forty claws had run through the carpet.It was full of little holes: there were some large ones, and more than one thin place.At one corner a strip of it was torn, and hung forlornly.

'We must mend it,' said Anthea; 'never mind about my stockings.Ican sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there's no time to do them properly.I know it's awful and no girl would who respected herself, and all that; but the poor dear carpet's more important than my silly stockings.Let's go out now this very minute.'

So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor in Kentish Town either.However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture fingering seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that -day Jane and Anthea darned and darned and darned.The boys went out for a walk in the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up and down the table--for exercise, as it said--and talked to the industrious girls about their carpet.

'It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from Kidderminster,' it said, 'it is a carpet with a past--a Persian past.Do you know that in happier years, when that carpet was the property of caliphs, viziers, kings, and sultans, it never lay on a floor?'

'I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,' Jane interrupted.

'Not of a MAGIC carpet,' said the Phoenix; 'why, if it had been allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn't be much of it left now.No, indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, embroidered with gems of fabulous value.It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings.Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it--except in the way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took their shoes off.And YOU--'

'Oh, DON'T!' said Jane, very near tears.'You know you'd never have been hatched at all if it hadn't been for mother wanting a carpet for us to walk on.'

'You needn't have walked so much or so hard!' said the bird, 'but come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.'

'Relate away,' said Anthea--'I mean, please do.'

'The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,' began the bird, 'had in her cradle been the subject of several enchantments.Her grandmother had been in her day--'

But what in her day Zulieka's grandmother had been was destined never to be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on each brow were the traces of deep emotion.On Cyril's pale brow stood beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert was a large black smear.

'What ails ye both?' asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting like that.

'Oh, do shut up, for any sake!' said Cyril, sinking into a chair.

Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly--'Squirrel doesn't mean to be a beast.It's only that the MOSTAWFUL thing has happened, and stories don't seem to matter so much.

Don't be cross.You won't be when you've heard what's happened.'

'Well, what HAS happened?' said the bird, still rather crossly; and Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.

'The most awful thing you can possibly think of,' said Cyril.

'That nice chap--our own burglar--the police have got him, on suspicion of stolen cats.That's what his brother's missis told me.'

'Oh, begin at the beginning!' cried Anthea impatiently.

'Well, then, we went out, and down by where the undertaker's is, with the china flowers in the window--you know.There was a crowd, and of course we went to have a squint.And it was two bobbies and our burglar between them, and he was being dragged along; and he said, "I tell you them cats was GIVE me.I got 'em in exchange for me milking a cow in a basement parlour up Camden Town way."'And the people laughed.Beasts! And then one of the policemen said perhaps he could give the name and address of the cow, and he said, no, he couldn't; but he could take them there if they'd only leave go of his coat collar, and give him a chance to get his breath.And the policeman said he could tell all that to the magistrate in the morning.He didn't see us, and so we came away.'

'Oh, Cyril, how COULD you?' said Anthea.

'Don't be a pudding-head,' Cyril advised.'A fat lot of good it would have done if we'd let him see us.No one would have believed a word we said.They'd have thought we were kidding.We did better than let him see us.We asked a boy where he lived and he told us, and we went there, and it's a little greengrocer's shop, and we bought some Brazil nuts.Here they are.' The girls waved away the Brazil nuts with loathing and contempt.

'Well, we had to buy SOMETHING, and while we were making up our minds what to buy we heard his brother's missis talking.She said when he came home with all them miaoulers she thought there was more in it than met the eye.But he WOULD go out this morning with the two likeliest of them, one under each arm.She said he sent her out to buy blue ribbon to put round their beastly necks, and she said if he got three months' hard it was her dying word that he'd got the blue ribbon to thank for it; that, and his own silly thieving ways, taking cats that anybody would know he couldn't have come by in the way of business, instead of things that wouldn't have been missed, which Lord knows there are plenty such, and--'

'Oh, STOP!' cried Jane.And indeed it was time, for Cyril seemed like a clock that had been wound up, and could not help going on.

'Where is he now?'

'At the police-station,' said Robert, for Cyril was out of breath.