The eyes of the honest porteress filled with tears as she looked at Gobbolino, for she had no heart to turn even a witch’s kitten out of doors, while all the orphans set up such a weeping and a wailing (particularly the little brothers) that they threatened to ruin all their best starched shirts and dresses as well as their dirty bibs, stretching out their arms and sobbing:
“Oh, don’t send away our dear, darling, beautiful Gobbolino!”
And in the middle of it all the Lord Mayor’s coach rolled up to the door, and the Lord Mayor’s coachman pulled the bell.
The porteress had just time to dry the orphans’ tears, wipe the chocolate sauce off their faces and remove their bibs, while the cook, having flung her slipper at Gobbolino and driven him into the kitchen, ran to open the door.
The orphans were ready with bows and curtseys and shy smiles of excitement when the Lord Mayor and Mayoress came into the hall, but the cook bounced back into the kitchen and slammed the door behind her.
“Now be off with you!” she cried to Gobbolino. “Witch’s cat! Magic maker! You shall never put spells into my cauldron again! Out into the street you go, and let me never see a whisker of your face again!”
So saying she picked up a stick and chased Gobbolino out of the back door into the street.
The little cat shivered and shook when he found himself safe round the corner.
“Oh, my goodness, how unlucky I am!” he said to himself, sitting down for a moment to get his breath. “I never meant any harm, I only meant to give some pleasure to those innocent children! Who would have thought it would lead to such trouble? Oh, why was I born a witch’s cat – oh, why?”
But as he became calmer he began to think that after all it might be for the best. The little brothers and the baby, all of whom he loved dearly, were about to be adopted by the Lord Mayor and given a happy home. They would certainly be well brought up, and the baby would have a stately cradle.
As for himself, the cook had never liked him, and would sooner or later have turned him out.
He sighed to think of the orphans’ gruel, but the porteress presided over the rest of their meals and they had nothing to complain of.
“Some day I shall find a happy home,” said Gobbolino, trotting along in the dust, and purring to think of the good fortune that had come to the little brothers.
7
The Lord Mayor’s Coach
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Gobbolino had not left the orphanage more than two miles behind him when he heard a far-off sound like the rolling of distant wheels and the galloping of horses.
With his ears a-prick he jumped lightly out of the road in case the coach should run him over in its haste, for on the road behind him a cloud of dust was coming nearer and nearer with such a thundering of hoofs, jingling of harness, and creaking of wheels as Gobbolino had never heard before.
Presently he could distinguish four grey horses driven at a furious speed, and could even hear the shouts of the driver urging them on faster and faster and faster.
“Oh, my goodness!” said Gobbolino. “That looks remarkably like the Lord Mayor’s coach which I saw standing at the orphanage door! If it really is so, he must have left in a hurry! Whatever can be the matter?”
He crouched against the roadside while the great coach thundered past, swaying and jolting like a clumsy elephant, but it had scarcely passed him before three voices called out:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Our darling, beautiful, sweet Gobbolino! Stop the coach! Stop! Stop! Stop! He’s here! He’s here! He’s here!”
And to Gobbolino’s horror and surprise he saw that the galloping coach with the sweating frantic horses and flying wheels was driven by the biggest of the three little brothers.
Two more leaned out of the windows, calling his name with all their might, while the baby, slung on the axle in his basket, solemnly sucked his thumb amid all the jolting and swinging and said nothing at all.
When they saw Gobbolino, Big Brother made a tremendous effort to draw in his horses, but they were galloping so fast that he only bewildered them. The coach swerved wildly round the next corner, catching the wheel hub on a large stone, and overturned. The next minute with a terrible crackling of shafts and splintering of gilded wood they were all upside down in the ditch.
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Gobbolino, galloping after them.
The horses were unharmed, and although all the little brothers were crying bitterly with distress and bruises on their foreheads, they were not sorely hurt either. The baby had been tossed on to the grass and was already picking dandelions, but the Lord Mayor’s beautiful golden coach lay in the ditch with broken shafts.
Gobbolino set the little brothers on their feet, prodding them for broken limbs in some anxiety. When he found they were all safe and sound, he cuffed their ears soundly all round, took the dandelions out of the baby’s mouth and said:
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you ought. I don’t know what in the world is to become of you! The Lord Mayor will never adopt you now!”
“Oh, please, don’t be angry with us, dear, sweet, kind Gobbolino!” sobbed the little brothers, bursting into fresh tears of grief and remorse. “How could you run away and leave us and not expect us to come after you and fetch you back again? How can you expect us to be adopted and leave you behind? We didn’t mean any harm! How can you be so angry with us, Gobbolino?”
“Well, well, well, it can’t be helped now,” said Gobbolino, wiping away their tears. “I suppose the coach can be mended, and the horses seem as fresh as ever. We must go back to the orphanage and ask the Lord Mayor’s pardon directly.”
Big Brother caught the horses and mounted the leader. Brother climbed on the second and Little Brother on the third. Gobbolino leapt lightly on the fourth, holding the baby in his basket in front of him. The horses were no longer excited and unmanageable; they trotted quietly back to the orphanage gate and stopped in front of the door.
They found the whole orphanage, the Mayor and Mayoress, the porteress, the four and twenty orphans– even the cook, assembled on the steps peering anxiously down the road.
When they saw the little brothers the Lord Mayor was the first to gather them into his arms.
“Oh, my poor, unfortunate children!” he cried. “You might have been killed or terribly injured! You might have broken your legs or cracked your skulls, or been thrown out into the road! When you become my sons you shall never, never run into such danger again!”
The Lady Mayoress hugged the baby in its basket and exclaimed in horror at the dandelion stains on its fingers.
“We must send for a new coach and take them home with us directly!” she said.
“They ought to be beaten!” said the cook, disappearing into the kitchen, but the porteress had already found out about the gruel and dismissed her.
By the time the porteress had put arnica on the bruises of the three little brothers and had scolded them well and told them to behave and kissed the baby and blown all their noses and kissed them again, the Lord Mayor’s second-best coach was at the door and it was time for them to start for their new home.
The Lady Mayoress took the baby on her lap, the three little brothers scrambled aboard, quarrelling as to which should sit next to the driver, and the coachman was just cracking his whip when the boys cried out in chorus:
“Gobbolino! Gobbolino! Where is Gobbolino? – please, oh, please, kind sir, don’t take us away without our little cat!”
The kind-hearted Lord Mayor was ready to do anything for his four new sons, but the Lady Mayoress detested cats.
Gobbolino might have been left behind again had not the baby stretched out its little arms so pleadingly that the Lady Mayoress herself opened the door, and Gobbolino jumped inside. He was careful to avoid distressing her by sitting very quietly in a far corner of the carriage, and so the coach rumbled steadily towards their new home, and Gobbolino realized with pleasure that he was now to become a Lord Mayor’s cat.