When Gobbolino heard these words he did not hesitate any longer. He remembered how a short while ago he too had been lonely and lost, and might be still if the children had not brought him into the farm. When the hobgoblin called him a kitchen cat he remembered how lucky he was, and trotted straight across to open the window.
“You may come in and warm your toes for a little while beside the fire,” he said.
The hobgoblin slipped across the table and sat down on the hearth beside Gobbolino, leaving dirty wet footmarks all across the kitchen floor.
“How is all your family?” he asked in a friendly manner, giving Gobbolino’s tail a friendly tweak.
“My mother Grimalkin has gone away with my mistress the witch!” replied Gobbolino. “And my little sister Sootica is apprenticed to a hag in the Hurricane Mountains. I don’t know how any of them are.”
“Oho!” said the hobgoblin with a gleam of mischief. “So you are a witch’s kitten?”
“Oh, no!” said Gobbolino shaking his head, “I am no longer any witch’s cat. This afternoon I became a kitchen cat, and a kitchen cat I shall be for ever and ever.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the hobgoblin, turning head over heels as if he thought Gobbolino was the greatest joke in the world. His somersault brought the farmer’s wife’s knitting off the chair, and in a moment it was tangled round the table legs, the pins were strewn over the floor, and the stitches running higgledy-piggledy after one another in greatest confusion.
“Take care! Take care!” cried Gobbolino, but the hobgoblin made one bound into the dairy and slammed the door.
Now every kitchen cat knows that no one may enter the dairy between sundown and sunrise, except the farmer’s wife, but Gobbolino had no idea of it.
He trotted round and round the kitchen gathering up the wool and the knitting-pins, trying to set them straight again, but all in vain. When the hobgoblin bounced back from the dairy sucking his fingers, which were covered with cream, the tangle was as hopeless as ever, and there was nothing to do but put it back on the cradle just as it was.
“Well, I’m off!” said the hobgoblin, jumping out of the window in one leap. “Maybe I’ll come back again and see you another night, maybe I won’t. Goodnight, my little witch’s kitten, and pleasant dreams to you!”
Gobbolino felt very relieved when the hobgoblin was gone, and he had bolted the window fast behind him.
“I have learned the first lesson of a kitchen cat,” he said. “I shall never open the window again.”
He trotted back to his box beneath the kitchen table and slept the rest of the night without waking.
Early in the morning when the farmer’s wife came down the stairs she found her knitting in a tangle and all the cream stolen from the dairy.
Written across the stone floor in milky letters were the words:
“Gobbolino is a witch’s cat!”
5
The Orphanage
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The farmer’s wife called her husband to come downstairs.
“The cream has gone!” she said. “My knitting is in a tangle, and look what is written on the dairy floor!”
“I told you so!” replied the farmer. “Kitchen cats don’t swim, and they don’t have blue and crimson sparks coming out of their whiskers. Kitchen cats don’t tangle knitting and steal the cream from the dairy. They don’t put strange writings on the floor! He’s a witch’s cat, and no good to anybody. I’m going to drown him directly!”
But when Gobbolino heard his angry voice and saw him coming across the kitchen with long and angry strides, he was out of his box in one bound and out of the kitchen door, across the cobblestones, past the hayricks, and up the hill.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” sobbed Gobbolino when he had left the farm far behind him and came to the other side of the hill. “What an unlucky little cat I am! Why was I ever born a witch’s kitten? Why – oh, why?”
He was sobbing so bitterly that at first he did not hear the sounds of sorrow that came from a tumbledown cottage beside the highway, but presently the noise of sobs and tears and lamentations became so loud that his own tears ceased, and he stopped to look in through the open door and see what could be the cause of such misery.
The cottage was as wretched as any he had seen, while in the middle of it three little brothers were packing all their worldly goods into three red handkerchiefs, while a baby in a basket looked on and joined in their sorrow, which was very loud and miserable indeed.
When they caught sight of Gobbolino they stopped crying immediately and rushed to pick him up.
The middle brother fell over the biggest brother, the smallest brother squeezed between their legs and brought them both down in a heap, while the baby tumbled out of its basket, and lay squalling in the middle of the floor, for he saw that he would never reach the kitten first, which made him very distressed indeed.
“Oh, you dear, sweet, pretty little cat!” cried all the little brothers together. “What is your name and where do you come from? And what are you doing wandering along the highway all alone?”
Gobbolino jumped lightly over their heads and tucked the baby back into his basket before he said sedately:
“My name is Gobbolino, and I come from the farm down yonder. I am looking for a home where I can catch the mice and mind the children and sit by the fire for ever and ever.”
“Oh, do stay with us!” begged the little brothers, and then they suddenly burst out crying again and sobbed:
“Oh! Oh! But we haven’t got a home any longer! We are orphans, and the house is tumbling to pieces! We’ve got to go out into the world and find a new house and a new father and mother! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
When Gobbolino found that the little brothers were in just such a plight as himself he took them all to his heart and tied up their little bootlaces and helped them pack their bundles one by one. Then he picked up the baby in the basket and led them out of the tumbledown cottage on to the king’s highway, where their tears soon dried as they chased butterflies and picked great bunches of kingcups that they gave to Gobbolino to carry for them.
As they ran and skipped and hopped they talked about the happy home they meant to find, the kind father and mother, and the splendid house with large gardens and a beautiful nursery full of rocking-horses and a thousand different toys, with a golden cradle for the baby.
“And of course there will be a place by the fire for you, dear, kind, good little Gobbolino!” they cried. “You must stay with us for ever and ever!”
Gobbolino felt he would like nothing better than to stay with these happy-go-lucky children, but if he could first help them to find kind parents and a happy home he did not mind what became of himself.
They were so young and innocent, he felt it was his duty to find a father and mother for them as soon as possible.
They had walked for some miles, and all the little brothers were tired as well as hungry, when they came to some high iron gates set in a high stone wall. Written across the top of the gates in gilt letters was the word“ORPHANAGE”.
When the little brothers read these words they clapped their hands with joy, while the baby in the basket crowed, and Gobbolino’s heart fluttered with pleasure at meeting such good fortune so quickly.
“What a lucky cat I am!” he said, putting down the basket to ring the bell. “This is just the place I was looking for! Surely here they will feed these poor children and be kind to them, or who else will?”
Before long a kind, rosy-faced woman in a white cap opened the door, raising her hands in astonishment at the sight of the three little brothers and the baby in the basket, who all began talking to her at once.
“Oh, please, ma’am, we are four orphans and our house is tumbled down and we are looking for a kind home and a father and mother and a cradle for the baby and a place by the kitchen fire for Gobbolino our little cat!”