"
'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.
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