'Peter—don't,' Jennie wailed, interrupting him, `I can't bear it. It's been on my conscience ever since we left him. It was a dreadful thing I did. Old people are always so very much more alone than anyone else in the world. I'll never forget the way he looked, standing there in the doorway, kind of lost and bent, calling to us and begging us to come back. It nearly broke my heart …'
`But, Jennie,' Peter said, `you were angry with me when I said the same thing after we ran away. You remember I said I felt like a rotter …'
`My Peter, of course I was,' Jennie said, still hiding her head, `because you were right and I knew you were. I was being mean and nasty and infeline and hard, and just hateful. And you were being sweet and kind and natural and wanting to do what was right, and of course it made me look and feel all the more horrid. That was why I made you come away with me to Glasgow …'
Peter felt quite confused now, and said: `But I thought you said you wanted to see your relatives and where you were born and. . .'
Jennie's head came up with a toss and she said, `Oh, bother my relatives. You saw what that one was like we happened to meet. And I suppose I have literally thousands of them up here who don't care any more about me than I do about them. But I thought if we went off on a little trip together it would take your mind off Mr. Grims and what I had done and—oh dear, I guess what I really thought is that it would take my mind off it. I was running away from having been a perfect pig.'
She leaned a little closer to Peter and continued with her confession. `And, of course, I couldn't get away at all. Wherever I was and wherever I went, down in the storeroom with you, up in the forecastle in the dark, waiting for a rat, I'd see him again and the expression on his face when he was begging for us to come back, and even during the biggest noises I would keep hearing his voice and remembering how I had behaved and repaid his hospitality. And then I tried to tell myself the reason I acted that way was because of what Buff had done to me. Then I would hear you saying that she couldn't have done that to me, that something must have happened, that it wasn't her fault, and I would have the most awful feeling that perhaps you were right and I had been wrong all the time and maybe she had come back there looking for me sometime, perhaps the next day even, and how she would have cried when she didn't find me …'
Peter felt sorry for Jennie, but in a way he was relieved too, for this was beginning to be like the old Jennie again, who loved to talk and talk and explain, and besides, he was terribly happy about her wanting to go back to Mr. Grims.
'And then,' Jennie continued, having drawn a deep, full breath and taken one desultory lick at her side, 'when I fell overboard I thought that it was the punishment being visited upon me for all my sins and that I deserved to be made an end of, and so when I found myself in the water I didn't much care any more and didn't really try very hard to keep up because I knew the ship would never turn around and come back to pick me up. Then YOU came to me and it was too much to bear, because I knew that I was to be the cause of your end too. After that I didn't remember anything more until I found myself in Mr. Strachan's cabin and you were washing me. But then and there I resolved to go back and live with Mr. Grime and try to make him happy and keep him company because I knew that until I did I would never have another peaceful moment.'
'I know,' Peter said. 'I thought about him a lot myself.'
'And then I was ashamed in front of you, Peter,' Jennie said, 'so very ashamed that I didn't know when or where or how to begin to tell you about wanting to go back. When we got marooned up there I kept thinking if we ever got down alive I would tell you at once and then perhaps I would stop leading you into such awful trouble and dangers-'
Peter interrupted-'Yes, but we always get out of them.'
'Some time we won't,' Jennie said grimly. 'The humans have made up a sort of supposedly funny saying that a cat has nine lives, which is, of course, utter nonsense. You are entitled to just so many narrow escapes in your life and then the next time you are going to catch it. I don't want there to be any next time. If we can find some way to get back to London, soon. . .'
‘Jennie!' Peter cried excitedly, `why not now-right away, if it isn't too late?'
'What do you mean, Peter … '
'Why, the Countess of Greenock. I could see her when we were up on the tower. She was still there this morning with a lot of black smoke coming out of her smokestack, the way it was the day we went aboard her in London. She'll be going back again. Maybe if we hurry we won't be too late and can catch her before she sails.'
Jennie gave a great sigh and pressed close to Peter for a moment. 'Oh dear,' she said, 'it's SO good to have a male about who knows what to do.' Then she leaped to her feet. 'Come on, Peter, let's run. She might be casting off any second.'
Away they went then, tossing rules and ordinary feline discretions to the winds, not bothering to take cover, or employ the point-to-point system, but bounding, leaping, flying over obstacles with not only the speed and agility of cats, but with that extra something that is lent to the limbs and the feet when a great weight has been lifted from the spirit.
Under the railway and George V bridges they charged, past the steamboat wharf where passengers were queueing for trips to Greenock and Gourock and Inverary and Ardrishaig, down the busy Broomielaw, with ships loading freight and cargo for all sorts of interesting places, but not an instant did they linger now for they knew that when the black smoke belched from her funnel the Countess might depart any second.
On to the Quay they flew, along the Clyde, Cheapside and Piccadilly, and, sure enough, there a hundred yards ahead of them was the Countess of Greenock pouring forth her soft-coal cloud which ceased for a moment and was replaced by a squirt of white steam that curled around her stack like a feather, and they heard her hooter go.
'Oh,' cried Peter, 'she's leaving. Faster, faster, Jennie. All you've got.' And they both flattened their ears back, let their tails streamline straight out behind them and fairly ate up the yards, a white blur and a dark brown one. How they ran!
And at that, they would have been too late if the crew of the Countess had not managed to get the gangplank stuck in the last moment when they came to unfasten it from the side of the little freighter preparatory to having it drawn back down on to the dock.
Mr. Box, the carpenter, had had to be summoned with his tools, his hammers and chisels and sledges, saws and wrenches and drills and augers, ratchets and levers, and he grew red in the face and beat at it and prised, hoisted and pushed with a series of 'Blimeys' and 'Lummies' and `Coo's,' and could do absolutely nothing with it. For a moment it looked as though the Countess was either bound to the pier by the gangplank for the rest of her life, or would have to sail with it sticking out of her side.
At this point Mr. Box wholly lost his temper and arising from his knees where he had been poking, sawing, chiselling and prising, he aimed a violent and vicious kick at the offending gangway which landed squarely on it and caused it to come loose quite easily, showing that that was what it had wanted all along, though the damage to Mr. Box's boot and toe was later assessed as considerable.
`There you are, lads!' he shouted to the navvies waiting down on the dock. `Haul away'
And haul away they did at the precise moment that Peter and Jennie came whipping on to the pier and up the gangway. There was already a gap of several yards between the end of the gangway and the side of the ship, but at the speed that Peter and Jennie were travelling it was as nothing and they flew across the space like a couple of furred birds and landed kerplump on Mr. Box's chest knocking him flat on his back, since he was off balance anyway at the time due to hopping around on one foot.
`Blimey!' groaned Mr. Box-'oh blimey. THEY'RE back!'
And back indeed they were on the iron deck of the dear, messy, smelly Countess. Everything was just the same as when they had left it, and in a way it was just like home. From the cabin of Captain Sourlies came the tinkle, crash and clatter of breaking glass and crockery. Mr. Strachan was on the bridge, in charge, his blue cap set well back on his brick-red curls so that it was not at all difficult to see the still visible remains of what must have been the father of all black eyes. From the gallery aft came drifting the mournful strains of Mealie's voice as he rendered in song a lament upon leaving. Mr. Carluke was just emerging from his cabin, the fingers of his right hand pointed and cocked like a pistol, and his left swinging and manipulating an imaginary lariat.
And the crew, under Angus who was roaring up by the steam winch for'ard, was making a beautiful, beautiful mess of the departure, casting off the wrong ropes and cables, making other wrong ones fast, turning things off when they ought to be turning them on, tripping over chains, coming near to letting the anchor go, permitting the Countess to get her stern caught in the tide so that she almost sideswiped an excursion boat bound for the Isle of
