"I can't reach her in time," gasped Octavian, "she'll be choked in the
muck. Won't you help her?"
"No one helped our cat," came the inevitable reminder.
"I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that," cried Octavian,
with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches
forward.
"Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?"
"Yes," screamed Octavian.
"Holding a candle?"
"An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?"
Octavian agreed to both suggestions.
"For a long, long time?"
"For half an hour," said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his
voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a German
king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas-
time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to
have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly in
their eyes.
"All right," came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a moment
later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, who
lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scrambling
gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass that
separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like
an unwilling cork from it's slushy embrace.
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