What Timmy Did by Marie Belloc Lowndes

However long Radmore lives, he will never forget that strange drive through the autumn night. Fortunately, from the two conspirators' point of view, there were only old-fashioned stables at Old Place, and Radmore's car was kept in the village in a barn which had been cleverly transformed by the blacksmith into a rough garage.

While he dressed, and, indeed, after he joined the boy downstairs, he had puzzled over Timmy -- over the mixture of cruelty and kindness the child had shown that evening. He could not but recall, with a feeling of discomfort, the simple, innocent way in which the boy had explained why he wanted to take his cat, Josephine, into the drawing-room -- really to do a kindness to the mistress of The Trellis House! It was somewhat disagreeable to reflect how he, Radmore, who rather prided himself on his knowledge of human nature, had been taken in.