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 I took him back to bed and we slept the night out!

‘Next morning I made out to tell my mother I’d had the dog in my room, and I was surprised, after all she’d said about it before, how quiet she took it. “Did you?” she says. “Well, by good rights you ought to go without your breakfast for doing such a thing behind my back: but I don’t know as there’s any great harm done, only another time you ask my permission, do you hear?” A bit after that I said something to my father about having heard the cats again. “Cats,” he says, and he looked over at my poor mother, and she coughed and he says, “Oh! ah! yes, cats. I believe I heard ’em myself.”

‘That was a funny morning altogether: nothing seemed to go right. The organist he stopped in bed, and the minor Canon he forgot it was the 19th day and waited for the Venite; and after a bit the deputy he set off playing the chant for evensong, which was a minor; and then the Decani boys were laughing so much they couldn’t sing, and when it came to the anthem the solo boy he got took with the giggles, and made out his nose was bleeding, and shoved the book at me what hadn’t practised the verse and wasn’t much of a singer if I had known