Читать книгу The Vagaries of Tod and Peter онлайн

43 страница из 79

It wasn’t, not by a long way; for although Mr. Neatby reasoned, nay, even almost implored Mrs. Vyner to reconsider her decision, she would hardly let him get a word in edgeways, and remained unshaken in her desire that he should vacate her rooms. “’Ow do I know, sir,” she asked again and again, “wot hanimals may be sent you next? My ’eart would be in my mouth every time the door-bell rang.”

Truly, Tod and Peter had planned a fearful vengeance had they only known it. But they did not know it, and their unsatisfied curiosity was their undoing. On Monday morning at the riding school they arranged with Figgins that he was to leave the fifth kitten at Mr. Neatby’s rooms that afternoon, just before afternoon school finished. The despatch of the hamper had been managed by a railway man, a friend of Figgins, whose cart started from a parcel-receiving office close to the riding school, and he delivered the hamper on his evening round.

Directly school came out, the twins decided to rush down to Mr. Neatby’s rooms before lock-up, to ask some frivolous question about a paper he had set, and perhaps by great good luck be present at the unveiling of the end of the sending. All fell out exactly as they had arranged. Figgins took the parcel. Mrs. Vyner received it, addressed as before to “S. S. Neatby, Esq., M.A.” (his real name was “Stuart,” not “Stinks”), carried it grimly into his sitting-room, and laid it on the table. She removed all her own ornaments from the chimneypiece and sideboard, and then went downstairs and brought up all four kittens (poor Mr. Neatby had not yet had time to arrange for their painless destruction), and shut them up in the room to await their owner’s return.