And leaving Mrs Bodkin protesting at the untouched scrambled egg cooling on their plates, they hurried away down the garden.
The door of the shed was open, and swinging on its hinges. John and Rosemary, their curiosity overcoming their reluctance, followed close behind as Uncle Zack stooped to go inside. They looked anxiously round in silence while he poked into every corner, behind piles of empty flower-pots and rusty garden tools.
‘Not a trace of a rat or a rat-hole,’ he said at last.
Nor a Scrabble either! thought both John and Rosemary. They grinned at each other with relief.
‘Curious,’ went on Uncle Zack. ‘Mrs Bodkin is a sensible woman. She can’t have imagined it; though she may have exaggerated the number of them, of course. “Squarish and not a tail between them”?’ He laughed. ‘A new kind of rat, perhaps? Sprules will be interested when I tell him.’
‘Then we can’t have un-wished the Scrabbles after all,’ said John gloomily, when they had finished their breakfast of stone-cold scrambled egg and leathery toast, and Uncle Zack had gone off to the little room he called his office. ‘If it is a wishing ring, why didn’t it work this time?’
‘P’raps I didn’t do the wishing properly,’ said Rosemary. ‘Or more likely it won’t unwish its own wishes.’
‘Well, let’s hope when Mother Boddles saw them scuttle off up the garden they were making for their holes,’ said John, with more confidence than he really felt. They went and hung over the gate in front of the house and looked up and down the road. There was nothing to be seen of the Scrabbles. ‘What are you staring at?’ said John.
‘I was watching that little cat limping along on the other side of the road,’ said Rosemary.
9. Dumpsie
ROSEMARY crossed to where, in the shadow of the hedge opposite, a small, draggled-looking tabby cat, not much bigger than a kitten, was stumbling on three paws over the rough grass. The fourth paw it seemed unable to put to the ground. It shrank back when she came near and, with flattened ears, spat half-heartedly, as she bent over it.
‘It’s all right, Puss,’ said Rosemary gently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ She knelt on the grass, and with two careful fingers stroked the silky top of its head. ‘It looks as if its paw is cut quite badly,’ she went on to John, who had joined her. ‘I wonder how it happened? Let’s get out the Golden Gew-Gaw and find out.’ Under her stroking fingers Rosemary felt the little animal’s tense body begin to relax.
‘Where do you come from, Puss?’ she asked, when she and John had both crooked little fingers through the ring.
‘We’re Hearing Humans,’ added John, ‘so you can tell us.’
‘I don’t care a whisker who you be!’ said the cat, looking up at them suspiciously. ‘I’m not telling nothing. Neither where nor why, because there’s some in high places trusts me not to. Trouble brewing, there is. Bad trouble, where I come from. Mind you, I’m not telling what, neither.’
‘Can’t you even tell us how you hurt your paw?’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ said the cat. ‘Boys that was. Threw a stone at me. Them Fallowhithe lads ...’ She broke off, and went on sulkily: ‘There, I’ve gone and told you “where”, and I didn’t mean to.’
‘Do you mean you’ve come all the way from Fallowhithe?’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s miles!’
‘Since the edge of last night I’ve been padding it. But with only three paws it’s hard going.’
‘Won’t you tell us who you are?’ asked John.
‘Me?’ replied the cat. ‘I’m a nobody, I am. That’s why I sez to myself, no one won’t notice the likes of me searching here and seeking there.’
‘What are you seeking and searching for?’ asked John.
‘That ‘ld be telling!’ said the little cat. ‘But I’ll go so far as to say it’s for who, not what.’ A small pink tongue flicked out for a moment. The cat gave a little moan. ‘What wouldn’t I give for so much as a dribble of milk!’
‘Look here,’ said Rosemary, turning to John. ‘Couldn’t we carry the poor thing indoors and bathe its paw?’
‘Just what I was thinking,’ he said. ‘And give it some milk. Come on!’
‘Here, wait a minute! Suppose I don’t want to come?’ said the little animal, shrinking back even further into the hedge. ‘Where might “indoors” be, I should like to know?’
‘Why here. Uncle Zack’s house, at Highdown.’
‘Highdown?’ said the little cat, with a sudden lift of her drooping head. ‘Then I’m in luck. For that’s where the seeking and searching really has to begin!’
‘Come on then,’ said John. ‘We’d better ask if we can keep her.’
Uncle Zack was busy in his office. He looked up absently for a moment from the papers that littered his desk, and waved distractedly at the one on which he seemed to be working. It was covered with figures, and almost as many doodles.
‘A cat?’ he said absently. ‘Yes, of course, of course. Might help with those rats. What is 425 divided by nineteen?’ Luckily he did not seem to expect an answer.
Mrs Bodkin, on the other hand, frowned rather fiercely.
‘A cat? Well, I don’t know! As if I hadn’t enough to do, what with you two, and the things to make for the Sale and ...’ She broke off: ‘My goodness me, that’s a nasty cut on its paw! Poor little thing! Well, what are you waiting for? Go and get the First Aid Box. It’s in the cupboard in the bathroom, and there’s some milk in a jug on the kitchen table.’
So that was all right.
Presently, bathed, bandaged and fed, with an empty milk saucer alongside, the little cat sat and washed itself by the sitting-room fire. Only then did John and Rosemary realize what a pretty creature it was, with shining tabby coat, snow-white stockings and wide white ruff.
‘It’s awfully difficult to talk to someone when you don’t know what to call them,’ said John.
‘You are a “she” anyway, aren’t you?’ asked Rosemary.
The cat looked up from licking a hind leg. ‘Ah, a she I be, right enough. And you’ve been that kind I don’t mind telling you my mammy calls me Wellingtonia.’
‘What a grand name!’ said Rosemary.
‘Not really. Born and bred in a Wellington boot I was, that’s why. Wellingtonia for best, but Dumpsie for ordinary, because the boot was on Fallowhithe Rubbish Dump. There’s some as turns up their grand noses at anywhere so low, but snug and warm it was, and handy for haddock heads, and the licking of sardine tins and such.’
‘Dumpsie,’ said Rosemary thoughtfully. ‘Where have I heard that name ...?’ But John interrupted.
‘Of course, I remember! This seeking and searching,’ he said to Dumpsie. ‘It wouldn’t be for a cat called Calidor?’
She lifted a startled face. ‘Ssh!’ she said, looking nervously over her shoulder. ‘Don’t you go for to call him by that name! Crumpet he’s called in these parts. He told me all about it, but he didn’t say a word to anyone else. How in the world do the likes of you know who he really is, when he was so set on it being a secret?’
‘We know because we talked to him only yesterday,’ said John.
‘Now I remember,’ said Rosemary. ‘He told us that his dear little Dumpsie was the only cat he could ever marry!’
‘And there can’t be two cats with such a sil ... I mean, unusual name,’ went on John. (Rosemary’s nudge had been nearly too late, but Dumpsie did not seem to have noticed.)
‘Did he really say that?’ she said softly, and she lifted her chin and purred such a purr as John and Rosemary had never heard before; but not for long. She stopped abruptly, and rose unsteadily on her three sound paws.
‘And while I’ve been guzzling and gossiping here the bad trouble may be getting worse. I must go. Where can I find him as calls himself Crumpet?’
Rosemary looked at John. ‘Couldn’t we take her to the station on our way to Tucket Towers? We must get on and do it. That’s if you’d like that, Dumpsie?’