ning!' 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. 'The
boy told us they'd put him in the cells, and would bring him up
before the Beak in the morning. I thought it was a jolly lark last
night--getting him to take the cats--but now--'

'The end of a lark,' said the Phoenix,