(If you are a duchess's child, or a king's, or a person of high social position's child, you will perhaps not know the difference between a dish-cloth and a tea-cloth; but in that case your nurse has been better instructed than you, and she will tell you all about it.) And just as eight hands and one pair of claws were being dried on the roller-towel behind the scullery door there came a strange sound from the other side of the kitchen wall--the side where the nursery was.It was a very strange sound, indeed--most odd, and unlike any other sounds the children had ever heard.At least, they had heard sounds as much like it as a toy engine's whistle is like a steam siren's.
'The carpet's come back,' said Robert; and the others felt that he was right.
'But what has it brought with it?' asked Jane.'It sounds like Leviathan, that great beast.'
'It couldn't have been made in India, and have brought elephants?
Even baby ones would be rather awful in that room,' said Cyril.'Ivote we take it in turns to squint through the keyhole.'
They did--in the order of their ages.The Phoenix, being the eldest by some thousands of years, was entitled to the first peep.
But--
'Excuse me,' it said, ruffling its golden feathers and sneezing softly; 'looking through keyholes always gives me a cold in my golden eyes.'
So Cyril looked.
'I see something grey moving,' said he.
'It's a zoological garden of some sort, I bet,' said Robert, when he had taken his turn.And the soft rustling, bustling, ruffling, scuffling, shuffling, fluffling noise went on inside.
'_I_ can't see anything,' said Anthea, 'my eye tickles so.'
Then Jane's turn came, and she put her eye to the keyhole.
'It's a giant kitty-cat,' she said; 'and it's asleep all over the floor.'
'Giant cats are tigers--father said so.'
'No, he didn't.He said tigers were giant cats.It's not at all the same thing.'
'It's no use sending the carpet to fetch precious things for you if you're afraid to look at them when they come,' said the Phoenix, sensibly.And Cyril, being the eldest, said--'Come on,' and turned the handle.
The gas had been left full on after tea, and everything in the room could be plainly seen by the ten eyes at the door.At least, not everything, for though the carpet was there it was invisible, because it was completely covered by the hundred and ninety-nine beautiful objects which it had brought from its birthplace.
'My hat!' Cyril remarked.'I never thought about its being a PERSIAN carpet.'
Yet it was now plain that it was so, for the beautiful objects which it had brought back were cats--Persian cats, grey Persian cats, and there were, as I have said, 199 of them, and they were sitting on the carpet as close as they could get to each other.
But the moment the children entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of moving, mewing pussishness, and the children with one accord climbed to the table, and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked on the wall--and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and piercing.
'This is pretty poor sport,' said Cyril.'What's the matter with the bounders?'
'I imagine that they are hungry,' said the Phoenix.'If you were to feed them--'
'We haven't anything to feed them with,' said Anthea in despair, and she stroked the nearest Persian back.'Oh, pussies, do be quiet--we can't hear ourselves think.'
She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening, 'and it would take pounds' and pounds' worth of cat's-meat.'
'Let's ask the carpet to take them away,' said Robert.But the girls said 'No.'
'They are so soft and pussy,' said Jane.
'And valuable,' said Anthea, hastily.'We can sell them for lots and lots of money.'
'Why not send the carpet to get food for them?' suggested the Phoenix, and its golden voice came harsh and cracked with the effort it had to be make to be heard above the increasing fierceness of the Persian mews.
So it was written that the carpet should bring food for 199 Persian cats, and the paper was pinned to the carpet as before.
The carpet seemed to gather itself together, and the cats dropped off it, as raindrops do from your mackintosh when you shake it.
And the carpet disappeared.
