THE TALE OF SAMUEL WHISKERS
Or,
THE ROLY POLY PUDDING
In Remembrance of "SAMMY," The intelligent pink-eyed
Representative of a Persecuted (but Irrepressible) Race An affectionate
little Friend, and most accomplished thief
Once upon a time there was an old cat, called Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, who was
an anxious parent. She used to lose her kittens continually, and whenever they
were lost they were always in mischief!
On baking day she determined to shut them up in a cupboard.
She caught Moppet and Mittens, but she could not find Tom.
Mrs. Tabitha went up and down all over the house, mewing for Tom Kitten. She
looked in the pantry under the staircase, and she searched the best spare
bedroom that was all covered up with dust sheets. She went right upstairs and
looked into the attics, but she could not find him anywhere.
It was an old, old house, full of cupboards and passages. Some of the walls
were four feet thick, and there used to be queer noises inside them, as if there
might be a little secret staircase. Certainly there were odd little jagged
doorways in the wainscot, and things disappeared at night—especially cheese and
bacon.
Mrs. Tabitha became more and more distracted, and mewed dreadfully.
While their mother was searching the house, Moppet and Mittens had got into
mischief.
The cupboard door was not locked, so they pushed it open and came out.
They went straight to the dough which was set to rise in a pan before the
fire.
They patted it with their little soft paws—"Shall we make dear little
muffins?" said Mittens to Moppet.
But just at that moment somebody knocked at the front door, and Moppet jumped
into the flour barrel in a fright.
Mittens ran away to the dairy, and hid in an empty jar on the stone shelf
where the milk pans stand.
The visitor was a neighbour, Mrs. Ribby; she had called to borrow some
yeast.
Mrs. Tabitha came downstairs mewing dreadfully—"Come in, Cousin Ribby, come
in, and sit ye down! I'm in sad trouble, Cousin Ribby," said Tabitha, shedding
tears. "I've lost my dear son Thomas; I'm afraid the rats have got him." She
wiped her eyes with her apron.
"He's a bad kitten, Cousin Tabitha; he made a cat's cradle of my best bonnet
last time I came to tea. Where have you looked for him?"
"All over the house! The rats are too many for me. What a thing it is to have
an unruly family!" said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit.
"I'm not afraid of rats; I will help you to find him; and whip him too! What
is all that soot in the fender?"
"The chimney wants sweeping—Oh, dear me, Cousin Ribby—now Moppet and Mittens
are gone!"
"They have both got out of the cupboard!"
Ribby and Tabitha set to work to search the house thoroughly again. They
poked under the beds with Ribby's umbrella, and they rummaged in cupboards. They
even fetched a candle, and looked inside a clothes chest in one of the attics.
They could not find anything, but once they heard a door bang and somebody
scuttered downstairs.
"Yes, it is infested with rats," said Tabitha tearfully. "I caught seven
young ones out of one hole in the back kitchen, and we had them for dinner last
Saturday. And once I saw the old father rat—an enormous old rat, Cousin Ribby. I
was just going to jump upon him, when he showed his yellow teeth at me and
whisked down the hole."
"The rats get upon my nerves, Cousin Ribby," said Tabitha.
Ribby and Tabitha searched and searched. They both heard a curious roly-poly
noise under the attic floor. But there was nothing to be seen.
They returned to the kitchen. "Here's one of your kittens at least," said
Ribby, dragging Moppet out of the flour barrel.
They shook the flour off her and set her down on the kitchen floor. She
seemed to be in a terrible fright.
"Oh! Mother, Mother," said Moppet, "there's been an old woman rat in the
kitchen, and she's stolen some of the dough!"
The two cats ran to look at the dough pan. Sure enough there were marks of
little scratching fingers, and a lump of dough was gone!
"Which way did she go, Moppet?"
But Moppet had been too much frightened to peep out of the barrel again.
Ribby and Tabitha took her with them to keep her safely in sight, while they
went on with their search.
They went into the dairy.
The first thing they found was Mittens, hiding in an empty jar.
They tipped up the jar, and she scrambled out.
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" said Mittens—
"Oh! Mother, Mother, there has been an old man rat in the dairy—a dreadful
'normous big rat, mother; and he's stolen a pat of butter and the
rolling-pin."
Ribby and Tabitha looked at one another.
"A rolling-pin and butter! Oh, my poor son Thomas!" exclaimed Tabitha,
wringing her paws.
"A rolling-pin?" said Ribby. "Did we not hear a roly-poly noise in the attic
when we were looking into that chest?"
Ribby and Tabitha rushed upstairs again. Sure enough the roly-poly noise was
still going on quite distinctly under the attic floor.
"This is serious, Cousin Tabitha," said Ribby. "We must send for John Joiner
at once, with a saw."
Now this is what had been happening to Tom Kitten, and it shows how very
unwise it is to go up a chimney in a very old house, where a person does not
know his way, and where there are enormous rats.
Tom Kitten did not want to be shut up in a cupboard. When he saw that his
mother was going to bake, he determined to hide.
He looked about for a nice convenient place, and he fixed upon the
chimney.
The fire had only just been lighted, and it was not hot; but there was a
white choky smoke from the green sticks. Tom Kitten got upon the fender and
looked up. It was a big old-fashioned fire-place.
The chimney itself was wide enough inside for a man to stand up and walk
about. So there was plenty of room for a little Tom Cat.
He jumped right up into the fire-place, balancing himself upon the iron bar
where the kettle hangs.
Tom Kitten took another big jump off the bar, and landed on a ledge high up
inside the chimney, knocking down some soot into the fender.
Tom Kitten coughed and choked with the smoke; and he could hear the sticks
beginning to crackle and burn in the fire-place down below. He made up his mind
to climb right to the top, and get out on the slates, and try to catch
sparrows.
"I cannot go back. If I slipped I might fall in the fire and singe my
beautiful tail and my little blue jacket."
The chimney was a very big old-fashioned one. It was built in the days when
people burnt logs of wood upon the hearth.
The chimney stack stood up above the roof like a little stone tower, and the
daylight shone down from the top, under the slanting slates that kept out the
rain.
Tom Kitten was getting very frightened! He climbed up, and up, and up.
Then he waded sideways through inches of soot. He was like a little sweep
himself.
It was most confusing in the dark. One flue seemed to lead into another.
There was less smoke, but Tom Kitten felt quite lost.
He scrambled up and up; but before he reached the chimney top he came to a
place where somebody had loosened a stone in the wall. There were some mutton
bones lying about—
"This seems funny," said Tom Kitten. "Who has been gnawing bones up here in
the chimney? I wish I had never come! And what a funny smell? It is something
like mouse; only dreadfully strong. It makes me sneeze," said Tom Kitten.
He squeezed through the hole in the wall, and dragged himself along a most
uncomfortably tight passage where there was scarcely any light.
He groped his way carefully for several yards; he was at the back of the
skirting-board in the attic, where there is a little mark * in the picture.
All at once he fell head over heels in the dark, down a hole, and landed on a
heap of very dirty rags.
When Tom Kitten picked himself up and looked about him—he found himself in a
place that he had never seen before, although he had lived all his life in the
house.
It was a very small stuffy fusty room, with boards, and rafters, and cobwebs,
and lath and plaster.
Opposite to him—as far away as he could sit—was an enormous rat.
"What do you mean by tumbling into my bed all covered with smuts?" said the
rat, chattering his teeth.
"Please sir, the chimney wants sweeping," said poor Tom Kitten.
"Anna Maria! Anna Maria!" squeaked the rat. There was a pattering noise and
an old woman rat poked her head round a rafter.
All in a minute she rushed upon Tom Kitten, and before he knew what was
happening—
His coat was pulled off, and he was rolled up in a bundle, and tied with
string in very hard knots.
Anna Maria did the tying. The old rat watched her and took snuff. When she
had finished, they both sat staring at him with their mouths open.
"Anna Maria," said the old man rat (whose name was Samuel Whiskers),—"Anna
Maria, make me a kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding for my dinner."
"It requires dough and a pat of butter, and a rolling-pin," said Anna Maria,
considering Tom Kitten with her head on one side.
"No," said Samuel Whiskers, "make it properly, Anna Maria, with
breadcrumbs."
"Nonsense! Butter and dough," replied Anna Maria.
The two rats consulted together for a few minutes and then went away.
Samuel Whiskers got through a hole in the wainscot, and went boldly down the
front staircase to the dairy to get the butter. He did not meet anybody.
He made a second journey for the rolling-pin. He pushed it in front of him
with his paws, like a brewer's man trundling a barrel.
He could hear Ribby and Tabitha talking, but they were busy lighting the
candle to look into the chest.
They did not see him.
Anna Maria went down by way of the skirting-board and a window shutter to the
kitchen to steal the dough.
She borrowed a small saucer, and scooped up the dough with her paws.
She did not observe Moppet.
While Tom Kitten was left alone under the floor of the attic, he wriggled
about and tried to mew for help.
But his mouth was full of soot and cobwebs, and he was tied up in such very
tight knots, he could not make anybody hear him.
Except a spider, which came out of a crack in the ceiling and examined the
knots critically, from a safe distance.
It was a judge of knots because it had a habit of tying up unfortunate
blue-bottles. It did not offer to assist him.
Tom Kitten wriggled and squirmed until he was quite exhausted.
Presently the rats came back and set to work to make him into a dumpling.
First they smeared him with butter, and then they rolled him in the dough.
"Will not the string be very indigestible, Anna Maria?" inquired Samuel
Whiskers.
Anna Maria said she thought that it was of no consequence; but she wished
that Tom Kitten would hold his head still, as it disarranged the pastry. She
laid hold of his ears.
Tom Kitten bit and spat, and mewed and wriggled; and the rolling-pin went
roly-poly, roly; roly, poly, roly. The rats each held an end.
"His tail is sticking out! You did not fetch enough dough, Anna Maria."
"I fetched as much as I could carry," replied Anna Maria.
"I do not think"—said Samuel Whiskers, pausing to take a look at Tom
Kitten—"I do not think it will be a good pudding. It smells sooty."
Anna Maria was about to argue the point, when all at once there began to be
other sounds up above—the rasping noise of a saw; and the noise of a little dog,
scratching and yelping!
The rats dropped the rolling-pin, and listened attentively.
"We are discovered and interrupted, Anna Maria; let us collect our
property—and other people's,—and depart at once."
"I fear that we shall be obliged to leave this pudding."
"But I am persuaded that the knots would have proved indigestible, whatever
you may urge to the contrary."
"Come away at once and help me to tie up some mutton bones in a counterpane,"
said Anna Maria. "I have got half a smoked ham hidden in the chimney."
So it happened that by the time John Joiner had got the plank up—there was
nobody under the floor except the rolling-pin and Tom Kitten in a very dirty
dumpling!
But there was a strong smell of rats; and John Joiner spent the rest of the
morning sniffing and whining, and wagging his tail, and going round and round
with his head in the hole like a gimlet.
Then he nailed the plank down again and put his tools in his bag, and came
downstairs.
The cat family had quite recovered. They invited him to stay to dinner.
The dumpling had been peeled off Tom Kitten, and made separately into a bag
pudding, with currants in it to hide the smuts.
They had been obliged to put Tom Kitten into a hot bath to get the butter
off.
John Joiner smelt the pudding; but he regretted that he had not time to stay
to dinner, because he had just finished making a wheel-barrow for Miss Potter,
and she had ordered two hen-coops.
And when I was going to the post late in the afternoon—I looked up the lane
from the corner, and I saw Mr. Samuel Whiskers and his wife on the run, with big
bundles on a little wheel-barrow, which looked very like mine.
They were just turning in at the gate to the barn of Farmer Potatoes.
Samuel Whiskers was puffing and out of breath. Anna Maria was still arguing
in shrill tones.
She seemed to know her way, and she seemed to have a quantity of luggage.
I am sure I never gave her leave to borrow my wheel-barrow!
They went into the barn, and hauled their parcels with a bit of string to the
top of the hay mow.
After that, there were no more rats for a long time at Tabitha
Twitchit's.
As for Farmer Potatoes, he has been driven nearly distracted. There are rats,
and rats, and rats in his barn! They eat up the chicken food, and steal the oats
and bran, and make holes in the meal bags.
And they are all descended from Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Whiskers—children and
grand-children and great great grand-children.
There is no end to them!
Moppet and Mittens have grown up into very good rat-catchers.
They go out rat-catching in the village, and they find plenty of employment.
They charge so much a dozen, and earn their living very comfortably.
They hang up the rats' tails in a row on the barn door, to show how many they
have caught—dozens and dozens of them.
But Tom Kitten has always been afraid of a rat; he never durst face anything
that is bigger than—
A Mouse.
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