Marrapit's colossal scheme began to
pour in.
The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every
stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a
clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate
generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon
the wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black
cats, yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each
appeared, Mr. Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his
assistants to the assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr.
Fletcher or Frederick; down would go the stranger cat. It was
exhausting work.
At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at
the gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop
lancers, Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
"Pass," he commanded, "in single file before me."
They passed. "Dolt! Dolt!" groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the
bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. "Dolt and
pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?"
How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut
was lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her
infamous captor smoking on the threshold?
Precisely at three o'clock Mr.
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