,' she says, 'you wouldn't believe,'
she says. ''E's only just settled down, as you may say,' she says.
'Ho, don't you fret,' I says to her, ''im and me we understands each
other. 'Im and me,' I says, 'is old friends. 'E's me dear old pal,
Corporal Banks, of the Skrimshankers.' She grinned at that, ma'am,
Corporal Banks being a man we'd 'ad many a 'earty laugh at in the old
days. 'E was, in a manner of speaking, a joke between us."

"Oh, do--go--on, Beale! What has happened to Edwin?"

The hired retainer proceeded in calm, even tones.

"We was talking there, ma'am, when Bob, which had followed me unknown,
trotted in. When the cat ketched sight of 'im sniffing about, there
was such a spitting and swearing as you never 'eard, and blowed," said
Mr. Beale amusedly, as if the recollection tickled him, "blowed if the
old cat didn't give one jump and move in quick time up the chimley,
where 'e now remains, paying no 'eed to the missus's attempts to get
him down again."

Sensation, as they say in the reports.

"But he'll be cooked," cried Phyllis, open-eyed.

Ukridge uttered a roar of dismay.

"No, he won't. Nor will our dinner. Mrs. Beale always lets the kitchen
fire out during the afternoon. It's a cold dinner we'll get to-night,
if that cat doesn't come down."

The professor's face fell. I had remarked on the occasion when I had
lunched with him his evident fondness for the pleasures of the table.
Cold, impromptu dinners were plainly not to his taste.

We went to the kitchen in a body. Mrs. Beale was standing in front of
the empty grate making seductive cat noises up the chimney.

"What's all this, Mrs. Beale?" said Ukridge.

"He won't come down, sir, not while he thinks Bob's about. And how I'm
to cook dinner for five with him up the chimney I don't see, sir."

"Prod at him with a broom handle, Mrs. Beale," urged Ukridge.

"I 'ave tried that, sir, but I can't reach him, and I've only bin and
drove 'im further up. What must be," added Mrs. Beale philosophically,
"must be. He may come down of his own accord in the night. Bein'
'ungry."

"Then what we must do," said Ukridge in a jovial manner which to me at
least seemed out of place, "is to have a regular, jolly, picnic
dinner, what? Whack up whatever we have in the larder, and eat that."

"A regular, jolly, picnic dinner," repeated the professor gloomily. I
could read what was passing in his mind.

"That will be delightful," said Phyllis.

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