The Fairy Caravan: Chapter XIX - Mary Ellen

CHAPTER XIX

MARY ELLEN

MARY ELLEN was a fat tabby cat with sore eyes, and white paws, and an unnecessarily purry manner. If people only looked at her she purred, and scrubbed her head against them.

She meant well; but she drove Paddy Pig wild.

“Was it a leetle sick piggy-wiggy? was it cold then?” purred Mary Ellen, working her claws into the horseblanket and squirming it upwards. The result was that the top of the blanket got into Paddy Pig’s mouth, whilst his hind feet were left bare and cold.

“Bless its little pettitoes! No, it must not kick its blanket off its beddee bed!”

“What, what, what? I’m suffocated! Sandy! Sandy! Take away this cat! I’m skumfished!”

“Was it a leetle fidgetty pidgetty—”

“Sandy, I say! Take away this awful cat!” screamed Paddy Pig.

At that moment Cheesebox entered the stable carrying a jug of rue tea. “He sounds very fractious. Keep him flat, Mary Ellen.”

Paddy Pig sat up violently under the blanket. “Bring me a bucketful of pig-wash! None of your cat lap!”

“Rue tea,” purred Mary Ellen; “my Mrs. Scales always prescribes nice rue tea in a little china cuppy cuppy, for poor sick piggy-wiggies with tummyakies.”

Paddy Pig swallowed the rue tea, under protest. He was sick immediately in spite of the expostulations of the two cats. Maggret, the mare in the next stall, blew her nose and stamped.

After he had exhausted himself with kicking and squealing, Paddy Pig sank into uneasy slumber. But every time he turned over he kicked off the blanket, and there was another cat fight.

Towards midnight he grew quieter. The cats sat up all night; wide awake and watchful. There were noises of rats in the old walls of the stable; and noises of night birds without.

Twice during the small hours of the morning Sandy’s black nose appeared under the stable door. He listened to the patient’s uneasy breathing, and then returned to his straw bed underneath the caravan.

At 2 A.M. the cats made themselves a dish of tea (proper tea, made of tea leaves). It enlivened them to endless purring conversations. They gossied about other cats of their acquaintance.

About our cat Tamsine, and her fifteenth family of kittens. And how Tamsine once was lost for a whole week, and came home very thin. And after all, she had been no further off than the next-door house, which was shut up empty, while the tenants had gone away for a week’s holiday.

But what had Tamsine been doing to get herself locked up in the next-door pantry, I wonder?

“Perhaps she was catching dear little mousy mousies,” purred Mary Ellen.

“She did not look as though she had eaten many. And to think that her people had heard her mewing, and had searched for her high and low, never guessing that the next-door house was locked up unoccupied!”

“And there was Maidie, too! oh, what a sad, sad accident! Caught in a rabbit trap, poor love! She has limped about on only three footsies ever since.”

“That comes of rabbitting,” said Cheesebox, who was a stay-at-home cat; “I used to know a black cat called Smutty, who caught moles alive, and brought them into the kitchen—”

“What, what, what! Will you be quiet you horrid old cats? I want to go to sleep!”

“A sweet pussy pussy is Tamsine. Whose kitten was she?” resumed Mary Ellen, after renewed struggles with the patient and the blanket.

“Whose kitten? She was Judy’s kitten, only, of course, she was not Judy’s. Judy had a fat big kitten of her own in the hayloft; and one day she brought in a much younger young kitten, the smallest that ever was seen. It was so very tiny it could sit inside a glass tumbler. Goodness knows where Judy had picked it up! She carried it into the house and put it down before the fire on the hearth rug. Judy nursed it, and it grew up into Tamsine; but it was not Judy’s kitten.”

“She was a fine cat, old Judy; such a splendid ratter.”

“Tamsine is a rubbish; she will not look at a rat; and she plays with mice, which is as silly as trying to educate them. Did you ever hear of Louisa Pussycat’s mouse seminary?”

“No? Never! does she bury the dear little things? I always eat them.”

“I did not say ‘cemetery,’ I said ‘seminary.’ ‘Seminary’ is the genteel word for school; Miss Louisa Pussycat is very genteel.

One night I went to town to buy soap and candles, and I thought I might as well call at the Misses Pussycats’ shop, as I was passing. On my way through the square I saw Louisa coming down the steps from the loft over the stores. She had purchases in a basket, and she was on her way homewards.

We passed the time of night, and inquired after each other’s kittens. Then, as I had hoped, she invited me to step in and drink a cup of tea, and inspect the latest spring fashions from Catchester. As we went along the cat-walk, she told me how she had commenced to keep a mouse seminary in addition to conducting the millinery business.

She said: ‘It is remarkable how character can be moulded in early youth; you would scarcely credit the transformation which I achieve with my mice, Cheesebox.’

I inquired: ‘Do you use porcelain moulds or tin, Louisa?’

‘Character, Cheesebox; I refer to the amelioration of disposition and character; not to compote of mouse. I mould and educate their minds. I counteract bad habits by admonition, by rewards, and—a’hem—by judicious weeding out. Recalcitrant pupils whose example might prove deleterious are fried for supper by Matilda. I never have any trouble with dunces or drones. My pupils excel especially in application, and in exemplary perseverance.

‘This very night I have left the whole seminary industriously occupied with the task of sorting two pounds of rice, which I have inadvertently poured into the moist sugar canister. Think of the time which it would have cost me to retrieve those grains of rice myself! But—thanks to my indefatigable mice—I am free to go out shopping; and my sister Matilda is drinking tea with friends, whilst my mouse seminary is sorting rice and sugar under the superintendence of my favourite pupil, Tilly-dumpling. I have also taught my mice to count beans into dozens, and to sift oatmeal into a chestnut.’

‘Dear me, Louisa,’ said I, getting a word in edgeways, ‘are their fingers clean enough to handle groceries? I always think one can smell mice in a store cupboard?’

‘My mice, Cheesebox, always lick their fingers before touching food.’

‘Really? and can you trust them with cheese?’

‘We have—a’hem—a china cheese cover, which the mice are unable to raise. But for ordinary household duties—such as tidying and dusting—their assistance is invaluable. And they call me punctually at 8.30—I should say 7.30—I sit up late, you know, trimming bonnets.’

At this point of the conversation, we turned a corner, and came in sight of the milliner’s shop; a little steep, three-storied house with diamond panes in the windows. (They call it Thimble Hall.) The house was lighted up; not only the shop, but also the parlour, which the Misses Pussycats only used on Sundays.

‘Dear me, Louisa, do you allow your mice to burn candles?’

‘A’hem—no. It is an indiscretion,’ said Louisa, feeling in her pocket for her latchkey. Even before the key was in the lock, we could hear pattering, squeaking, and shrill laughter.

‘Your pupils seem to be merry, Louisa?’

‘It must be that little wretch Tilly Didlem, who eats comfits in school. I will have mouse sausage for supper,’ said Louisa, opening the house door hurriedly.

As we entered the passage, we encountered a smell of toffee; and something boiled over on the parlour fire with a flare-up. There was pitter pattering and scurrying into mouse-holes; followed by silence. We looked into the parlour; the fire had been lighted upon a weekday; and upon the fire was a frying-pan.

‘Toffee! Mouse toffee! Toffee with lemon in it. I’ll toffee you! I will bake the whole seminary in a pasty!’

‘When you catch them, Louisa. After all—when the cat’s away the mice will play!’

I fancy that was the end of the Misses Pussycats’ mouse seminary. Since then they have been content to manage the bonnet shop.”