Kitty burst into a howl of sympathy. To be sent to bed was the most terrible punishment known to the little Boltons.
‘Oh, Jane, give him just _one_ more trial,’ she wailed. ‘He’ll never do it again—w-will you, Micky?’
‘Never mind, Kitty,’ said Micky, assuming an air of saintly resignation which maddened Jane. ‘I’ll try to bear it, and she’ll be sorry one day.’
‘Bear it or not, you’ll come to bed _this instant_!’ said Jane, seizing hold of his sailor-collar and marching him off.
Just as they reached the door into the kitchen, she paused to say to Alice: ‘You’d better hang them blankets upon the line. I’ll not have them in the house again till they have been well washed, after being stuffed up with that dirty dog.’
‘There’s many a Christian been a longer time without a bath than Punch,’ remarked Cook; whereupon Micky turned his head and gave Emmeline as deliberate a wink as Jane allowed him time for. Luckily neither Jane nor Cook seemed to notice the wink, or if they did, they merely took it for one more sign of the outrageous ‘mischiefulness,’ which was supposed to account for the blankets being found in the kennel at all.
Emmeline began to breathe freely again when once Jane and Micky had disappeared into the house. It had been a dreadful five minutes, but they seemed to have come out of the scrape better than could have been expected.
In spite of Emmeline’s relief that the blanket affair had passed off without their secret being discovered, the rest of the afternoon was thoroughly spoilt for both her and Kitty.
Kitty left off crying presently and stole upstairs to take the now empty tooth-glass out of its hiding-place in her dress-pocket underneath her overall; after which she went on to Micky’s room in the hope of being able to bear him company. Jane had locked the door however, and carried off the key, so that Kitty had to creep downstairs again, feeling very much grieved and disappointed.
‘It does seem hard poor Micky should have all the punishment when we were just as much in it really,’ Kitty remarked sadly to Emmeline.
‘Well, but we weren’t quite,’ said Emmeline, ‘putting the blankets in the kennel was quite his own idea, you know.’ But, in spite of this, she was too fair-minded a child not to feel uncomfortable at the injustice as well as very sorry for poor Micky. But what troubled her most was the fact that the blankets would no longer be available. Diamond Jubilee would be so cold without them, and, besides, how should she persuade him to sleep at the Feudal Castle now that they could not be held out as an inducement? She had been worrying over the problem for a good while when it suddenly struck her that she had read somewhere that newspapers made almost as warm a bed-covering as blankets. How would it be to take some out to the Feudal Castle? She knew just where the old _Standards_ were kept.