Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/24

16 last hambone. He knows all these things and a great deal more, but he doesn’t go about chattering. He leaves that to the sparrows and the house-mice, who spread all the gossip between them. Murrum sits and washes his paws.

The moonlight is white on the doorstep and Murrum is black, but there is a white patch just under his chin, and he has four white mittens. He washes and washes, down his nose and over his ears and round his ears, and while he washes he smiles.

“I’ve fixed them this time!” says Murrum.

“Fixed what?”

Murrum stops washing and stares down with his pale insolent eyes.

It is Toad, the old night-watchman, with his brown wrinkled coat and speckled vest. He comes out from under the doorstep, blinks up through his gold spectacles and grunts. “Fixed what?” he says again.

“Mind your own business!” says Murrum.

“It is my business!” said the Toad. “Everything’s my business. I wish it wasn’t. I have too much to look after, that’s what it is! It keeps me on the hop the whole time. Dearie me, what’s all that noise?”

There was certainly a commotion going on indoors. Bumping and thumping and clattering, and with it the queerest little shrieks and howls. Muffled noises, as though a number of small people were shut up together