As she waited on us at breakfast next morning, she told my father that she had seen in her bed the biggest rat she ever saw in her life, and had not had a wink of sleep in consequence.
“Well,” said my father, “that comes of not liking cats. You should get a pussy to take care of you.”
She removed her quarters to the nursery. But there it was yet easier for me to plague her. Having observed in which bed she lay, I passed the string with the rat at the end of it over the middle of a bar that ran across just above her head, then took the string along the top of the other bed, and through a little hole in the door. As soon as I judged her safe in bed, I dropped the rat with a plump. It must have fallen on or very near her face. I heard her give a loud cry, but before she could reach the door, I had fastened the string to a nail and got out of the way.
It was not so easy in those days to get a light, for the earliest form of lucifer match was only just making its appearance in that part of the country, and was very dear: she had to go to the kitchen, where the fire never went out summer or winter. Afraid lest on her return she should search the bed, find my harmless animal suspended by the neck, and descend upon me with all the wrath generated of needless terror, I crept into the room, got down my rat, pulled away the string, and escaped. The next morning she said nothing about the rat, but went to a neighbour’s and brought home a fine cat. I laughed in my sleeve, thinking how little her cat could protect her from my rat.
Once more, however, she changed her quarters, and went into a sort of inferior spare room in the upper part of the house, which suited my operations still better, for from my own bed I could now manage to drop and pull up the rat, drawing it away beyond the danger of discovery. The next night she took the cat into the room with her, and for that one I judged it prudent to leave her alone, but the next, having secured Kirsty’s cat, I turned him into the room after she was in bed: the result was a frightful explosion of feline wrath.
I now thought I might boast of my successes to Turkey, but he was not pleased.
“She is sure to find you out, Ranald,” he said, “and then whatever else we do will be a failure. Leave her alone till we have her quite.”