sitting on the carpet
as close as they could get to each other. But the moment the children
entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed
from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of
moving, mewing pussishness, and the children with one accord climbed to
the table, and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked
on the wall--and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and
piercing.

'This is pretty poor sport,' said Cyril. 'What's the matter with the
bounders?'

'I imagine that they are hungry,' said the Phoenix. 'If you were to feed
them--'

'We haven't anything to feed them with,' said Anthea in despair, and she
stroked the nearest Persian back. 'Oh, pussies, do be quiet--we can't
hear ourselves think.'

She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening,
'and it would take pounds' and pounds' worth of cat's-meat.'

'Let's ask the carpet to take them away,' said Robert. But the girls
said 'No.'

'They are so soft and pussy,' said Jane.

'And valuable,' said Anthea, hastily. 'We can sell them for lots and
lots of money.'

'Why not send the carpet to get food for them?' suggested the Phoenix,
and its golden voice came harsh and cracked with the effort it had to be
make to be heard above the increasing fierceness of the Persian mews.

So it was written that the carpet should bring food for 199 Persian
cats, and the paper was pinned to the carpet as before.

The carpet seemed to gather itself together, and the cats dropped off
it, as raindrops do from your mackintosh when you shake it. And the
carpet disappeared.

Unless you have had one-hundred and ninety-nine well-grown Persian cats
in one small room, all hungry, and all saying so in unmistakable mews,
you can form but a poor idea of the noise that now deafened the children
and the Phoenix. The cats did not seem to have been at all properly
brought up. They seemed to have no idea of its being a mistake in
manners to ask for meals in a strange house--let alone to howl for
them--and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed,
till the children poked their fingers into their ears and waited in
silent agony, wondering why the whole of Camden Town did not come
knocking at the door to ask what was the matter, and only hoping that
the food for the cats would come before the neighbours did--and before
all the secret of the carpet and the Phoenix had to be given