By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg-up on to the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out-house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling the title _rôle_; and it had proved distinctly useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away. The curate’s undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he had dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large: “Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!” Fortunately for me, the vicar also was a caller on that day; and it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in the open. Kenneth Grahame, _The Golden Age_. Copyright by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. By permission of the publishers. THE KITCHEN JULIET SOSKICE The kitchen was at the end of a stone passage at the foot of a flight of stone steps. I liked to go there, but I was not really allowed to. I liked it best of all in the evening when the servants had finished supper, and sometimes the cook would let me sit on a chair in the corner near the stove. She was rather an ill-tempered cook, though she often used to laugh. She had been in the family ever since my mother was quite a little girl. She had a dark yellow face and brown eyes and black hair. It was quite straight like tape, and she scraped it back from her forehead and did it in a funny knob behind. It wasn’t black really, but she used an excellent hair dye, and said, what did it matter if it came off on the pillow cases? She said nobody need look their age if only they would take the trouble to look young. But she didn’t look young herself, because she was so bony and her face so dreadfully wrinkled. She looked very nice though when she laughed and showed her false white teeth. They looked whiter than other people’s false teeth, because her face was so yellow and her eyes so dark. Occasionally she flew into an awful temper and swore so dreadfully that it shocked every one who heard her. But at other times she was quite cheerful and told very funny stories.