It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. Patient and cold, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. The wise cats never appeared. We were so still in the snows that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the cry of the neighbor's Polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder. " Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero.  And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, towards the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining room.  This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We loaded with snowballs, stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room. Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face; but he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, " A fine Christmas!" There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.  " Do something," he said.  And we throw all our snowballs into the smoke---I think we missed Mr. Porthero---and ran out of the house.  " Let's call the police," Jim said.  "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires." But we only called the fire-brigade, and soon the fire-engine came. Mr. Porthero gout out just in time before they turned the hose on. Why were the boys in Mrs. Prothero's garden?
They were about to start a snowball fight. They were waiting to see if there any fires this year. They were waiting to hear Mrs. Porthero's first cry. They were waiting for the neighbour's cats to appear.