Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “O Buff,” she said, “if you had only been willing to learn when you were little, you might have been as clever as your sister, instead of being the great anxiety you are to me.”

  “Now the back of a cow is the last place where you would look for a cat.”

  “And why am I an anxiety?” I said, ruffling up my fur and my tail, for I was very angry.

  “Because you are useless,” she said, “and not particularly handsome; and when a cat is useless and not particularly handsome, they sometimes — —”

  “What?” I said, turning pale to the ends of my ears.

  “They sometimes drown it, Buff,” she said in a whisper, and turned away to hide her feelings.

  Judge of my own next day when they came into the kitchen and took me up and put me into a basket. I knew all about drowning. These tales of horror are told at twilight time in all cat nurseries, and I knew that if three large stones were put into the basket with me, I might consider my fate sealed.

  It was very uncomfortable in the basket. They carried me upside-down part of the way, and it was draughty and hard; but, so far, there were no stones. When they took off the lid of the basket, I found myself under the shade of a huge moving mountain, that seemed about to fall and crush me. It was an elephant.

  I found that the people where my mother lived had given me to the cook, who had given me to her cousin, who was engaged to be married to a young man whose brother-in-law was the elephant’s keeper, and so I found myself in the elephant’s house.

  There was no milk for me — no heads and tails of fish — no scraps of meat — no delicious unforeseen morsels of butter.

  The elephant was very kind to me. He had once had a friend exactly like me, he explained, but had unfortunately walked upon him, and now I had come to fill the vacant place in his large heart.

  I resolved at once that he should not walk upon me; but in order to insure this, I was compelled to enter upon a more active existence than I had ever known.

  When I asked what I was expected to eat, he said —

  “Mice, I suppose; or you can have some of my buns if you like. You might like them at first, but you will soon get tired of them.”

  But I couldn’t eat buns. I was never, from a kitten, fond of such things. I got very hungry. Again and again the mice rushed through the straw, and I, heavily, helplessly, in my unpractised way, rushed after them. At first the elephant laughed heartily at my inexpertness; but when he saw how hungry and wretched I was, he said —

  “They won’t give you any milk, and if they find you don’t catch the mice they will take you away from me. Now you are a nice little cat, and I don’t want to part with you. We must try and arrange something.”

  Then the great thought of my life came to me.

  “You walked on the other cat,” I said.

  “What?” he trumpeted in a voice of thunder.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said hastily; “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings” — and, indeed, I could not have imagined that an elephant would have been so thin-skinned—”but a great idea has come to me. Why shouldn’t you walk on mice — not too hard, but just so that I could eat them afterwards?”

  “Well,” said the elephant, showing his long tusks in a smile, “you are not very handsome, and you are not very brisk; but you certainly have brains, my dear.”

  He dropped his great foot as he spoke. When he lifted it, there lay a mouse. I had an excellent supper; and before the week’s end I heard the keeper say, “This cat has certainly done the trick. She has kept the mice down. We must keep her.”

  They have kept me. They even go so far as to allow me to moisten my mice with milk.

  There is no moral to this story, except that you should do as you are told, and learn everything you can while you are young. It is true that I get on very well without having done so, but then you may not have my good luck. It is not every cat who can get an elephant to catch her mice for her.

  A Silly Question

  “HOW do you come to be white, when all your brothers are tabby, my dear?” Dolly asked her kitten. As she spoke, she took it away from the ball it was playing with, and held it up and looked in its face as Alice did with the Red Queen.

  “I’ll tell you, if you’ll keep it a secret, and not hold me so tight,” the kitten answered.

  Dolly was not surprised to hear the kitten speak, for she had read her fairy books, as all good children should, and she knew that all creatures answer if one only speaks to them properly. So she held the kitten more comfortably and the tale began.

  “You must know, my dear Dolly,” the kitten began — and Dolly thought it dreadfully familiar—”you must know that when we were very small we all set out to seek our fortunes.”

  “Why,” interrupted Dolly, “you were all born and brought up in our barn! I used to see you every day.”

  “Quite so,” said the kitten; “we sought our fortune every night, and it turned out to be mice, mostly. Well, one night I was seeking mine, when I came to a hole in the door that I had never noticed before. I crept through it, and found myself in a beautiful large room. It smelt delicious. There was cheese there, and fish, and cream, and mice, and milk. It was the most lovely room you can think of.”

  “There’s no such room — —” began Dolly.

  “Did I say there was?” asked the kitten. “I only said I found myself there. Well, I stayed there some time. It was the happiest hour of my life. But, as I was washing my face after one of the most delicious herring’s heads you ever tasted, I noticed that on nails all round the room were hung skins — and they were cat skins,” it added slowly. “Well may you tremble!”

  Dolly hadn’t trembled. She had only shaken the kitten to make it speak faster.

  “Well, I stood there rooted to the ground with horror; and then came a sort of horrible scramble-rush, and a barking and squeaking, and a terrible monster stood before me. It was something like a dog and something like a broom, something like being thrown out of the larder by cook — I can’t describe it. It caught me up, and in less than a moment it had hung my tabby skin on a nail behind the door.

  “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “I crept out of that lovely fairyland a cat without a skin. And that’s how I came to be white.”

  “I don’t quite see — —” began Dolly.

  “No? Why, what would your mother do if some one took off your dress, and hung it on a nail where she could not get it?”

  “Buy me another, I suppose.”

  “Exactly. But when my mother took me to the cat-skin shop, they were, unfortunately, quite out of tabby dresses in my size, so I had to have a white one.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” said Dolly.

  “No? Well, I’m sure it’s as good a story as you could expect in answer to such a silly question.”

  “But you were always — —”

  “Oh, well!” said the kitten, showing its claws, “if you know more about it than I do, of course there’s no more to be said. Perhaps you could tell me why your hair is brown?”

  “I was born so, I believe,” said Dolly gently.

  The kitten put its nose in the air.

  “You’ve got no imagination,” it said.

  “But, Kitty, really and truly, without pretending, you were born white, you know.”

  “If you know all about it, why did you ask me? At any rate, you can’t expect me to remember whether I was born white or not. I was too young to notice such things.”

  “Now you are in fun,” said poor Dolly, bewildered.

  The kitten bristled with indignation.

  “What! you really don’t believe me? I’ll never speak to you again,” it said. And it never has.

  The Selfish Pussy

  “YES,” said the tortoiseshell cat to the grey one, as she thoughtfully washed her left ear, “I have lived in a great many families. You see, it’s not every trade that deserves to have a cat about the place. My first master was a shoemaker,
and I lived with him happily enough, until one morning in winter, when I found the wicked man sewing strips of — let me whisper — cat’s fur on a pair of lady’s slippers!

  “I mewed as I saw it, and he, thinking I wanted milk, put down his work to get me some, for he was fond enough of me. I drank the milk, and then I ran away. I could not live with such a man.

  “My next home was in a garret, with a half-starved musician who made violins. A violin is a musical instrument that miauls when you touch it just as we cats do, and it was amusing to live with a man who could make things with voices like my own. He was very poor, and often had not enough to eat, but he always got me my cat’s-meat; and when there was no fire on, he nursed me to keep me warm. But one day I learned, from the talk of one of his friends (a man as lean as himself) who came to see him, that the strings of the violins were taken from the bodies of dead cats. No wonder the voices were like my brothers’ voices, since they were stolen from my brothers’ bodies. He might take my own voice some day.

  “I was picked up in the street by a child.”

  “So next day, after the cat’s-meat man had called, I walked quietly out, and never saw that bad violin-maker again.

  “I was picked up in the street by a child, who took me home to her mother’s house. They were rich folk; they had curtains, and cushions, and couches, and they did very little but nurse me, or sometimes, not wishing to hurt his feelings, the Italian greyhound. But they liked me best, of course. They were a noble family; and I should have been living with them still, but one year, when they went to the seaside, they forgot to provide for my board and lodging, and I had to go into trade again.

  “‘Milk ahoy! milk ahoy!’ I heard that well-known music as I sat lonely on the doorstep of the deserted mansion in the Square. The milkman looked lonely too; so I thought it would be only kind to go home with him. I did. He was a very well-meaning man, but his tastes were low. He took skim milk in his tea, and gave me the same. Of course, after that, I could not stay another hour under his roof.

  “I tried two or three other houses, and I could have been happy with a very nice butcher who kept a corner shop, but he kept a dog also, a dog that no cat in her senses would live in the same street with; so I came away — rather hurriedly, I remember — and the dog saw me off. Now I live with a worker in silver, and I have cream every day; and when he makes a cream-jug, and I remember what will be put in it some day, I lick my lips, and think what a happy cat I am to live with such a good man. Where do you live?”

  “With a poor widow, in an attic. I never have enough to eat.” And, indeed, the grey cat was thin.

  “Why do you stay with her?”

  “Because I love her,” said the grey cat.

  “The dog saw me off.”

  “Love!” replied the tortoiseshell cat. “Nonsense! I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Poor puss!” said the parrot in the window. The grey cat thought it was speaking to the tortoiseshell, and the tortoiseshell was certain it meant the grey. Which do you think it meant?

  Meddlesome Pussy

  I WAS separated from my mother at a very early age, and sent out into the world alone, long before I had had time to learn to say “please” and “thank you,” and to shut the door after me, and little things like that. One of the things I had not learned to understand was the difference between milk in a saucer on the floor, and milk in a jug on the table. Other cats tell me there is a difference, but I can’t see it. The difference is not in the taste of the milk — that is precisely the same.

  It is not so easy to get the milk out of a jug, and I should have thought some credit would attach to a cat who performed so clever a feat. The world, my dear, thinks otherwise. This difference of opinion has, through life, been a fruitful source of sorrow to me. I cannot tell you how much I have suffered for it. The first occasion I remember was a beautiful day in June, when the sun shone, and all the world looked fair. I was destined to remember that day.

  The fishmonger (talk of statues to heroes! I would raise one to that noble man!) — the fishmonger, I say, brought his usual little present to me. I let the cook take it and prepare it for my eating. I am always generous enough to permit the family to be served first — and then I have my dinner quietly at the back door.

  Well, he had brought the salmon, and I followed the cook in, to see that it wasn’t put where those dogs could get it; and then, the dining-room door being opened, I walked in. The breakfast things were lying littered about, and on the tea-tray was a jug.

  Of course, I walked across the table, and looked into the jug; there was milk in it.

  It was a sensible, wide-mouthed jug, and I should have been quite able to make a comfortable breakfast, if some clumsy, careless servant hadn’t rushed into the room, crying “Shoo! scat!”

  This startled me, of course. I am very sensitive. I started, the jug went over, and the milk ran on to the cloth, and down on the new carpet. You will hardly believe it, but that servant, to conceal her own carelessness, beat me with a feather brush, and threw me out of the back door; and cook, who was always a heartless person, though stout, gave me no dinner. Ah! if my fishmonger had only known that I never tasted his beautiful present, after all!

  But though I admired him so much, I could not talk to him. I never, from a kitten, could speak any foreign language fluently. So he never knew.

  My next misadventure was on an afternoon when the family expected company, and the best china was set out. Why “best”? Why should a saucer, all blue and gold and red, with a crown on the back, be better than a white one with mauve blobs on it? I never could see. Milk tastes equally well from both.

  “Seeing the tea set out, I got on the table.”

  I went into the drawing-room before the guests arrived — just to be sure that everything was as I could wish — and, seeing the tea set out, I got on the table, as usual, to see whether there was anything in the saucers. There was not, but in the best milk-jug there was — CREAM!

  The neck of the best milk-jug was narrow. I could not get my head in, so I turned it over with my paw. It fell with a crash, and I paused a moment — these little shocks always upset me. All was still — I began to lap. Oh! that cream! I shall never forget it!

  Then came a rush, and the fatal cry of “Shoo! scat!” — always presaging disaster. I saw the door open, and, by an instinct I cannot explain, I leaped from the table. In my hurry, my foot caught in the handle of the silver tray. We fell together — neither the tray nor I was hurt — but the best china!!!

  I picked myself up, and looked about me. The family had come in. I read in their faces that their servant’s unlucky interruption of my meal had destroyed what was dearer to them than life — than my life, at any rate. I fled. I went out homeless and hopeless into the golden afternoon.

  I live now with a Saint — a maiden lady, who takes condensed milk in her own tea, and buys me two-pennyworth of cream night and morning.

  And cat’s meat, too!

  And the glorious fishmonger still leaves his offerings at my door.

  Nine Lives

  “MOTHER,” said the yellow kitten, “is it true that we cats have nine lives?”

  “Quite, my dear,” the brindled cat replied. She was a very handsome cat, and in very comfortable circumstances. She sat on a warm Turkey carpet, and wore a blue satin ribbon round her neck. “I am in the ninth life myself,” she said.

  “Have you lived all your lives here?”

  “Oh dear, no!”

  “Were you here,” the white kitten asked, in a sleepy voice, “when the Turkey carpet was born? Rover says it is only a few months old.”

  “No,” said the mother, “I was not. Indeed, it was partly the softness of that carpet that made me come and live here.”

  “Where did you live before?” the black kitten said.

  A dreamy look came into the brindled cat’s eyes.

  “In many strange places,” she answered slowly; adding more briskly, “and if you will be goo
d kittens, I will tell you all about them. Goldie! come down from that stool, and sit down like a good kitten. Sweep! leave off sharpening your claws on the furniture; that always ends in trouble and punishment. Snowball! you’re asleep again! Oh, well; if you’d rather sleep than hear a story — —”

  Snowball shook herself awake, and the others sat down close to their mother with their tails arranged neatly beside them, and waited for the story.

  “I was born,” said the brindled cat, “in a barn.”

  “What is a barn?” asked the black kitten.

  “A barn is like a house, but there is only one room, and no carpets, only straw.”

  “I should like that,” said the yellow kitten, who often played among the straw in the big box which brought groceries from the Stores.

  “I liked it well enough when I was your age,” said the mother indulgently, “but a barn is not at all a genteel place to be born in. My mother had had a little unpleasantness with the family she lived with, and, of course, she was too proud to stay on after that. And so she left them, and went to live in the barn. It wasn’t at all the sort of life she had been accustomed to.”

  “What was the unpleasantness?” Sweep asked.

  “Well, it was about some cream which the woman of the house wanted for her tea. She should have said so. Of course, my mother would not have taken it if she had had any idea that any one else wanted it. She was always most unselfish.”

  “What is tea?”

  “A kind of brown milk — very nasty indeed, and very bad for you. Well, I lived with my brothers and sisters very happily for some months, for I was too young to know how vulgar it was to live in a barn and play with straw.”

  “What is vulgar, mother?”

  “Dear, dear; how you do ask questions,” said the brindled cat, beginning to look worried. “Vulgar is being like everybody else.”

  “But does everybody else live in a barn?”

  “No; nobody does who is respectable. Vulgar really means — not like respectable cats.”