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.
At ten minutes past five he hastened in, trod on one of the kittens as he entered the room, and struck a match to light his lamp. The kitten noisily proclaimed its injury, and the other three expressed their sympathy in similar terms. When he caught sight of the brown-paper parcel on the table he turned pale. The very feel of it was enough, and even before he had torn off the cover he was sure of its contents. Yes, in a common little bird cage was a fat, white kitten, and an uncommonly tight fit she was.
He did not attempt to let her out, though her position was plainly one of extreme discomfort, but stood with the cage in his hands, and the four mewing kittens about his feet, in so universally distrustful a frame of mind that he began to think that Mrs. Vyner herself was in the plot to victimize him.
The door was opened, and his landlady’s voice announced: “Two young gentlemen to see you, sir.”
Fresh colored and handsome, ruddy from their run in the cold evening air, square-shouldered and upstanding, Tod and Peter allowed their two pairs of candid blue eyes to travel from their master’s angry face to his hands, from his hands holding the caged kitten to his feet, where congregated the rest of the sending, and then exclaimed in a chorus of genial astonishment: “Why, sir, what a lot of kittens you keep!”
Now, although he had been at the school three terms, no boy had ever ventured to call upon Mr. Neatby before. Other masters might occasionally ask boys to tea or permit an occasional call out of school hours to arrange about house matches, etc. But he had ever discouraged any familiarity whatsoever, and that Tod and Peter should dare to intrude upon him at such a moment seemed to him, as indeed it was, a piece of unparalleled impertinence.