To my great surprise Rosamond, who is thirteen and hardly ever cries, burst into tears and spilt all the tea out of her mouth on to the tablecloth.
'Wilhelmina died,' said Kitty hastily. 'Poor thing!'
'Don'tyoupity her,youmurdered her,' sobbed Rosamond. 'Oh, Auntie May, she broke her and pulled her all to sticks and streaks, and she had been all through scarlet fever with me—'
'And she had beendefected, she had,' said Kitty, tremendously interested.
'Shut up, you snake!—which left Wilhelmina weak and easily breakable, and so when Kitty got hold of her she just sighed and came in pieces. I have never minded anything in my life so much, and Kitty never even said she was sorry.'
'I'll make her,' said Amerye, taking part in the conversation for the first time. 'Come along with me, Kitty, and I'llmakeyou sorry!'
Tea was over and she marched Kitty into a corner, and Auntie May said she would give Rosamond a new doll if she really cared so much.
'Not now,' Rosamond said. 'I am rising fourteen now, as Daddy says, and the next doll I have will have to be a real one. No more make-believe children for me, thank you!'
'Only tink, Mees,' said Fraülein Grueber to Auntie May, 'what dat dear shild make me soffer! I try very hard to train her mind. I say to her when we are promenading togedder, how you call dis or dat naturlish object? It is what you call the Kindergarten method—teach her her nouns and werbs. Dere are some cows in the field, and I say, "Kiddy, what do you call dose tings?" and Kiddy she answer, "Pigs." I say, "No, Kiddy, not pig, try again," and she say, "Well, den, rooks." Then I get angert, and I say, shaking my umberell, "You make a fool of me, Kiddy, and what are they? Finish!" And Kiddy, she smile sweetly and say, "Mushrooms." Then I am quite out of myself, and I say, "No tea for you, Kiddy, till you tell me what dose are!" Then she seem a bit worried, and she look hard at the cows and she say, "Monkeys!"
'I take her and I shake her and I say, "Kiddy, no jam with your tea!" and she only reply, "I not care for jam," which is one big lie and she know it. Then she appear all at once to melt and say, "Fraülein, I tell you, because you are so kind," and I say, "Yes, yes, my shild!" all in haste to be friends mit her again, and she whisper in my ear, "Liddle boys!" Then I lose my whole head completely and I whip her toroughly. Here, kom, my own liebchen, my lamb, have you been good and made your apologies to your sisterchen?'
Kitty had just come in again, led by Amerye.
'IamsorryRosamond,' she said, all in one word to show how little she cared. 'Now, Amerye, take me to see your chickens as you promised.'
'I said if Auntie May will come too,' corrected Amerye. And so, to help Amerye to keep the promise by which she had got Kitty to beg Rosamond's pardon (Kitty wasn't allowed near the hen-house because of something she once had done—I could never find out what), Auntie May had to say 'yes,' and off we all went to the hen-house, although poor Auntie May had only bead slippers on, while Amerye had goloshes. I had no shoes, but Auntie May took me across her shoulder. I did not mind going so long as I was not taken up to those awfully rude rabbits, and I suspected they were somewhere that way; people generally keep all their children's nuisances in one place. But we did not after all go near them, and all I saw was nice hens, and one duck with a beak exactly the colour of Amerye's hair. All his family had been eaten, but somehow he had got left out so long that they hadn't the heart to kill him.
AUNTIE MAY TOOK ME ACROSS HER SHOULDER.
AUNTIE MAY TOOK ME ACROSS HER SHOULDER.
AUNTIE MAY TOOK ME ACROSS HER SHOULDER.
I was glad they didn't put me down among the animals. I didn't fancy that broad bill of the duck's fumbling at me.
Next day at luncheon Kitty scored off Miss Grueber again. Kitty adores chocolate pudding, and when it is there she gallops through her first helping of rice so as to be ready for chocolate.
Miss Grueber, who knew this, said, 'Kiddy, you are done your rice double-quick time. I see you come.Nowwhat you want?'
And Kitty said very politely, 'Somemorerice pudding, if you please.'
That night I was back in the drawing-room again, on Beatrice's knee, and they all talked of ghosts. I was surprised to hear that Mrs. Gilmour had seen several north-country ghosts. In fact she knew them very well, and said there was no need to be afraid of them, for they never touched you.
Auntie May made her quite angry by telling her that her cat Petronilla saw ghosts.
'Last year,' said Auntie May, 'I took her to Littlecote, the famous Elizabethan mansion that is haunted by Wild Darrell. We had Queen Elizabeth's room, with a stone carved mantelpiece that seemed to overhang the whole room. Pet slept on my bed on the side farthest away from the door. About the middle of the night—I was not exactly sleeping very well myself—I felt her stirring, and I lit a candle, for there is of course no electric light in such a very old house. Petronilla was sitting up in her place, staring out at something near the door. Her great green eyes were round and dilated. She sat staring fixedly in the same direction for quite five minutes—'
'Are you quite sure as to the number of minutes?' asked Mrs. Gilmour, sarcastically.
'I could not help staring too, though I saw nothing but my white dressing-gown hanging on the door. Poor Pet saw more than that, I am sure. At last she sighed and took her eyes slowly off, and lay down again and never stirred. I knew by that that the ghost was no longer visible.'
'I am much obliged to you for confounding me with your feline pets,' remarked Mrs. Gilmour. 'And now I think, Beatrice, as I am rather tired, I will say good-night. Miss Graham, excuse my remarking it, but I do think you have cat on the brain!'
'She's offended,' said Beatrice, 'and now she'll cut me off with a shilling. I must say, May dear, that for a novelist you are about the most tactless person I ever knew.'
Mrs. Gilmour was never very nice to Auntie May after that. She began to be nasty again at breakfast. Auntie May was reading her letters, and one of them was from Mrs. Dillon.
'"Admiral Togo,"' Auntie May read out, '"is the chief joy of my life." Oh listen, all of you, for you will be so much amused; I am not, for of course it seems to me the obvious and natural thing to do. "He is coming with me to my winter quarters in South Africa."'
'And Mr. Dillon—is he being left behind?' said Mrs. Gilmour. 'Though after all, what is a husband in comparison with a cat? And she is taking a hired attendant for him, and possibly a chef, and engaging a private cabin for him—ofcourse?'
'There isn't a Mr. Dillon,' said Auntie May, shaking with laughter, 'but as far as the cabin goes, that is precisely what sheisdoing. She says so.'
Mrs. Gilmour looked a little put out for a moment, then she said:
'I don't suppose they would admit the young gentleman except on those conditions. Well, well, if people have absurd fancies they must pay for them. Your friend seems to have plenty of good money to throw away!'
Auntie May said she would send a letter of directions to Mrs. Dillon's maid, to tell her how to feed the kitten on the voyage. Forgetting apparently that Mrs. Gilmour was there still, she went on:
'When medicine has to be given, I prefer it in the form of powders.' Mrs. Gilmour pretended to be interested in order to be nastier afterwards. 'To liquids they close their throats somehow, and it runs out of the corner of their mouths. As for giving pills! Petronilla shoots the pill several feet into the air, and the first thing that tells me she hasn't swallowed it is the noise it makes as it hits the ceiling. Poor Pet! She appears to think it funny.'
'So do I!' said Beatrice, screaming with laughter. 'I think I see Petronilla, with her Burne-Jones angel expression, staring up to the ceiling to see if she has hit the bull's eye, and you in despair because you can't get the pills driven into her.'
'Has your cat had anyveryalarming illnesses?' inquired Mrs. Gilmour, with a very perfidious expression, but Auntie May was quite taken in by her appearance of interest.
'Let me see, Petronilla has had gastritis, and she has once ricked her back jumping backwards, and then she had to have massage—'
'Did it come expensive?' inquired the old lady.
'Yes, very. My cats cost me a fortune. What with their food and their illnesses, etc., what I can raise on Pet's kittens hardly repays me for my outlay.'
'Why don't you keep a nice common underbred kitchen cat that nobody wants to steal? A serviceable beast that can go out in all weathers, and get through the long grass without getting its fur wet and draggled,' said Mrs. Gilmour.
'But as I live in London,' retorted Auntie May, 'where there is no long grass—'
'In London,' said Tom, 'I should say myself that a nice tiler and mouser would be more appropriate.'
'I don't like tilers and mousers or beetlers in my bed,' said Auntie May hotly. 'I should never care to kiss cats that had any horrid pursuit of that kind. And as for mice—do you mean to imply, Tom, that Loki cannot catch a mouse as well as anybody if he had the chance?'
Mrs. Gilmour sneered, and Auntie May got quite pink.
'There are plenty in my carpentering shed,' said Tom. 'Why don't you let him have a try?'
'It's disgusting!' said Auntie May. 'But yet—I can't have Loki depreciated and looked down on. Very well, I will turn him in there for a few hours and give him a chance of winning his spurs, only I am not sure if he does that I shall ever feel able to speak to him again! He has something better to do in life than catching mice, but I won't have him humiliated, and heshallshow you that he can take mousing in his stride.'
To me she said, 'Now, Loki, do your level best, but only this once, mind. You are not to become a slave to the mousing habit, or let it grow on you. Come along to the carpenter's shed.'
She took me there and left me alone, shutting the door after her. I implored her to stay, but she said No, that I must go through it alone. At first I cried, but becoming convinced she could not hear me, I left off. I played with shavings for about an hour. It was my first introduction to the fascinating, lovely, curly, crunchy, clean, white things. I could bunch them up in my paws and throw them over my shoulder, and they crackled and twisted when I seized them again as if they were alive.
I PLAYED WITH SHAVINGS FOR ABOUT AN HOUR.
I PLAYED WITH SHAVINGS FOR ABOUT AN HOUR.
I PLAYED WITH SHAVINGS FOR ABOUT AN HOUR.
I had never seen a mouse in my life.
Presently I saw what I should have said were two bright boot-buttons set very near together, side by side, though, not one on top of the other as they would be all down a boot. That roused my suspicions, and I made a wild dash into the heap of shavings whence they peeped out. I can say no more than this to account for what I did. I felt horrid afterwards, not to say rather ill, but at the time I felt nothing but a desire to get that mouse (for, of course, it was a mouse), and lay it at the feet of Auntie May, or, better still, throw it in Mrs. Gilmour's face. I should have died if I had not got it, and I did get it. Itwasa mouse, although I hardly looked. I just put my paws, which are very broad and long, on it and it lay quite still beneath them and didn't move a bit.
I did not know what in the world to do with it now that I had got it safe. I knew that decency dictated that I should eat it, but I had not the slightest idea where to begin, and I suppose, while I was thinking, I let my paws rest on it rather more lightly, and it suddenly got up and walked away!
I could not stand such an arrant piece of cheek as that, so I got it back, with very little trouble, for it had not gone far. In a few moments I loosened my paws again on purpose to see what it would do. Sure enough it walked away again! It began to be a sort of game we were playing, and my blood was up.
It was really rather a cheeky mouse, I think, and enjoyed the game as much as I did. Presently I varied the fun a little and tossed it up and down two or three times in the air, catching it again in my paws. This went on a long time, and I got quite excited, till the last time it came down it lay quite still, and though I waited for it to walk away again as usual it did not make the slightest attempt to get up. I believe it was dead, really and truly, not pretending, but there wasn't a bruise on its body or a hole in its skin anywhere, for I looked carefully. I got bored with it and caught another. That one I nipped in catching, I suppose, for it died at once. I tried to eat it, but no, I find I don't care for mouse-flesh.
Before Tom and Beatrice came for me I had laid another brown body beside the other two, and Tom said when he saw them:
'One to May! Game little cat! Three in two hours!'
Auntie May hadn't felt able to come, but Beatrice told her all about it.
'He didn't really eat any, May, only tried one. It looked like the inside of a clock somehow.'
'Oh, don't, you pig!' screamed Auntie May, and cried, actually cried, about the poor, dear, dead, darling little mice! I cried too, and promised her I would never catch any more. As a matter of fact, it really isn't a bit in my line. I am not a stable, or a kitchen, or even a carpenter's cat, and mousing is not a fit pursuit for Petronilla's child.
'So Loki has vindicated his reputation!' remarked Mrs. Gilmour, when she heard of what Beatrice was pleased to call my prowess. 'Disgusting little cruel wretch! The principle of cruelty is deeply embedded in a cat's consciousness. Now a dog—'
'What does a dog do to a rat?' asked Auntie May rudely. But Mrs. Gilmour took no notice.
'The dog is a noble animal—'
'I once wrote that out a hundred times in my copy-book,' observed Amerye, 'and I can't write any better now, and I hate dogs because of it!'
'Hush, Amerye, you are rude!' said Miss Grueber.
'A dog has dignity, a cat has only impudence,' continued Mrs. Gilmour, 'and comes when he is called—'
'To dinner, eh?' said Auntie May. 'I never knew a cat that would come when it was called to dinner, even. A cat is at least consistent. A dog is too greedy to wait to be consistent.'
'A dog can be greedy with dignity!' said Mrs. Gilmour. 'I have seen him. And yet he is man's slave—self-constituted.'
'I prefer the independence of cats,' retorted Auntie May. 'They won't be hustled—why should they? It is a mistake to want to enslave them and destroy all their individuality. Dogs simply feed the love of domineering that is implanted in our natures. Men—you even, Tom, the nicest of them—enjoy saying "To heel, sir!" A cat never follows, it goes before, and looks back and waits for you if it fancies you. It has pronounced likes and dislikes, and is not afraid to show them. A dog will lick any one's hand.'
'And a cat will scratch any one's nose. How do you manage in London, Miss Graham, when you have to go out? Do you confide in all your partners, and tell them that it was your favourite cat that scratched you through thick and thin?'
'Yes, May,' said Beatrice, 'I could not help looking at your neck last night at dinner, and wondering how you managed?'
'That was poor Loki,' said Auntie May hastily. 'Hewillget on to my shoulder and take flying leaps at the electric light globes.'
'I don't see why he need kick off from your neck, though,' said Tom.
'Oh, don't blame his dear spirits!' said that nasty old woman. 'Do you see him now trying to run away with the blind tassel? He will hang himself to a certainty.'
I was sitting on the window seat and playing with the cord. I was not aware that it was attached to the blind, for it was lying quite quietly on the sill when it came into my head that I should like to carry it off to play with. When, having got it well between my jaws, I leapt off with it, I found myself hanging to it by my teeth, and it gave me a nasty jar.
One thing I noticed, although Mrs. Gilmour was always down on me when Auntie May was there, she was quite different when we were alone together. Then she used to hold out her wrinkled claw and flip her ribbons to attract me, and say, 'Poos! Poos!' as if she wished me to come to her; but I was not quite sure, so I never ventured, though she was not a bad old thing in the main and awfully fond of her grandchildren, and scolded them only very gently for the noise they made every day about six o'clock.
I don't know how it was, but at that time they all lost their heads, and screeched and shouted and walloped about the house like maniacs or cats, with Miss Grueber scolding them, but not in a way to make them leave off. I used to feel quite excited too, and run after their legs, and nearly get trodden on; and Miss Grueber's large flat foot was no joke, I can tell you. Still, it was quite amusing playing Blind Man's Buff and not getting caught. They always put me into their games, and politely caught me when I put myself in the way of the one who was blindfolded. Of course I could not be blindfolded, so they had to let me off being Blind Man, like Kitty, who never would play fair, but always peeped under the handkerchief.
'Don't be angry with her, she's only a child!' Rosamond used to say, 'and let her go last down stairs, because we are heavier, and might come on top of her.'
They used to come down the stairs helter-skelter on their stomachs, bumping on every step. I used to come down too, but I could not help using my feet, and therefore I ran along by the side of them, and got to the bottom first.
Once Mrs. Gilmour came out of the drawing-room, just as the whole procession landed on the mat at the bottom of the staircase. The noise was deafening. She remarked on it.
'My dear children,' she said, standing at the open door of the drawing-room as they all came tumbling at her feet, 'I tremble to think what your little stomachs must look like! Have you ever seen toast done on a gridiron? And the racket is deafening. Such yells! Have you all gone mad? And the cat too, he makes as much noise as any of you!'
'Oh, Granny,' pleaded Rosamond, very much out of breath, 'please don't mind the row. It's only just after six. Don't you know that children and cats always go a little wild at night?'
Mr. Fox had a large house-party at Shortleas for a week's shooting, and he asked Tom and Beatrice to come and bring Auntie May, and stay three days. Beatrice wanted to accept, so Mrs. Gilmour agreed to stay and look after the children.
'He doesn't ask Loki!' said Beatrice slily. 'Can you possibly do without him for a week, May?'
'Ican take care of him,' said Rosamond eagerly, 'and he can sleep on my bed, can't he?'
'And on mine too,' pleaded Amerye.
Kitty said nothing. She knew she wouldn't be trusted to have a cat or anything else on her bed.
'We will take him on alternate nights, Amerye,' said Rosamond, and so that was settled. Beatrice and Tom and Auntie May drove over to Shortleas in the dog-cart. Auntie May looked far sorrier to leave me than glad to go to stay with Mr. Fox. She has never liked him really since he didn't bear to be in the same room with her cat.
Then the children solemnly took possession of me, and Rosamond prevented them from hugging me and lifting me. She never allowed anybody to do that but herself. She is a domineering little thing. I lived in the schoolroom all day, and went up to bed with them at eight. Miss Grueber went up too with them to their rooms, and they had bed drill. It was very odd. They undressed by drill, they had brushing-teeth drill, they had health-exercises drill. I wondered if they would have prayers drill, but they did that alone, without Miss Grueber, all kneeling down by the side of their beds, and tucking their nightgowns carefully under their toes for fear I were to play with them and distract them, which I certainly should have done, because they were quite pink.
The brushing-teeth drill was very funny. One, pour water in the glass! Two, lid off box of tooth-powder! Three, dip brush in glass! Four, dip brush in tooth-powder! Five, scrub! Repeat five times! Then, Listerine!
They had separate beds, at least Kitty's was not much more than a crib, she was so little. The moment Fraülein Grueber had gone they all three got into the same—Rosamond's or Amerye's, there was a different hostess each night. Then they babbled for an hour or so, till they fell asleep. They called it an hour, but children always exaggerate, and I don't believe it was more than twenty minutes. They discussed everything, all the things that had been discussed before them, and whispered before them, and said when they were out of the room even—they seemed to have heard and to know everything. Rosamond snubbed Amerye because she had been to stay in London with Auntie May five times, while Amerye had only been three times. They both snubbed Kitty because she had never been to London at all. They found her very convenient, because she was supposed to want to know things, and gave them a chance of talking about London. She knew that, and sometimes teased them by saying that she didn't want to hear anything about the horrid place where she had never been.
Amerye began like this:
'Do you know that when I was in London—?'
'Of course we know. Go on.'
'Well, when I was in London I went toEveryman.'
'Were taken, you mean.'
'Went to a play calledEveryman, and I cried, and Auntie May cried, and Mr. What's-his-name cried. They both said it made them feel so wicked. It didn't make me feel wicked, only sad and hungry.'
'When I was in London,' said Rosamond, 'I went to see Henry Irving as Faust, and I had to go away to the very back of the box.'
'Why?' asked Kitty. 'Petticoat coming down, or sick?'
'No, neither, but because I was nervous.'
'Nervous! Pooh! It was because you were afraid of the devil, you said last time.'
'So I was, till I found out it was Sir Henry Irving, and then I liked him and came back to the front seat again, and fell in love with him—'
'Fell in love with the devil? How could you?'
'Everybody does in London.'
'Now, Amerye, you tell us some more about London,' begged Kitty, whose business it was to keep the balance true between them.
'Well, I went to lunch in a restaurant with Auntie May, and had tournedos—that means turn your back.'
'What to?'
'The fire, of course, till they were done,' said Amerye quickly. 'They were all seamed across in bars. I ate two.'
'And what did you drink?'
'Ah—oh—lemonade. Auntie May had champagne.'
'I've had champagne once—in London,' said Rosamond thoughtfully.
'How much?'
'Half a wine-glassful.'
'And how did you feel?'
'As if I should like to lay my head on somebody's shoulder and go to sleep.'
'That's being drunk.'
'That isn't a nice word to use, Amerye.'
'It is not a nice thing to be,' said Amerye severely.
'Children! Children!' said Kitty. 'Tell us some more, Rosamond.'
'Last time I was in London,' began Rosamond eagerly, 'I sat to grandpapa with Petronilla on my lap.'
'Did you sit still?'
'I did, but Petronilla didn't. She wiggled and wobbled and made my hands simply ache. At last I got a ball of Auntie May's crewel wools to hold scrumped up into the shape of Petronilla. That was when he was doing my hands. I washed them first.'
'And is it like you—the portrait?'
'I don't know,' said Rosamond carelessly. 'Grandpapa keeps it in a corner with a lot of old easels and things on top of it. He is going to finish it, some day, when I'm altered. Now, Amerye, you can tell us about the Zoo.'
Amerye began in a great hurry, for fear, I suppose, Rosamond took back her permission.
'Well, when I was in London I was always asking Auntie May to take me to the Zoo—teased her,shesaid, and gave her no peace—and she kept putting off and putting off, saying she was too busy. She never seemed able to fix a day. But one afternoon when we were out paying calls—'
'I suppose she left you in the hall then? She did me sometimes.'
'Not often,' said Amerye, 'and if there were children in the call I always went up to them. We got into a bus—'
'Is that a kind of trap?' said Kitty.
'All carriages are traps, but all traps aren't carriages, dear Kitty,' said Rosamond. 'Don't interrupt till the end. Go on, Amerye.'
'We bundled along for many miles and then stopped at the garden gate of a house, and got out and paid a shilling and a sixpence and went in. It was a very railey garden with walks between, and I said, "Is it a long walk up to the house?" and Auntie May said it was. There were some long-legged birds walking in the grass beside us and some deer, but I didn't notice them much, for I was anxious to find out if any children were there. There were several gardeners in livery walking about. Then we came to a cage with some owls in it bobbing up and down—'
'Like that dear brown one,' said Kitty, 'that lived in the crooked tree for three months and then went to the devil, father said.'
'And I said to Auntie May, "Your friends seem very fond of animals," and she said, "Oh yes, perfectly mad on beasts, they are!" Then we went under a low archway, and there we met two lots of children carrying buns, and I must say I thought them very rude carrying away their teas like that. But I said nothing out loud, only I hoped I should be allowed to go up to nursery tea at the house, as there seemed quite a lot of children about, and it would be fun—'
'Now you have gone on long enough,' said Rosamond. 'Tell her what it was.'
'It was the Zoo. For I then saw a camel and a bear much too large for any private house, and I said to Auntie May, "Oh, Auntie May, you have brought me to the Zoo after all."'
'I love that story,' said Kitty. 'And then tell how a man gave you some monstrous biscuits for the bears and Auntie May gave him sixpence. And how then you met a man who was king of the Zoo!'
'Yes,' said Amerye, 'and he gave the bears some Nestlé's milk, and let Auntie May have a baby wolf to hold in her arms. Its mother seemed a very nice collie dog, like Meg. And then—and then'—(Kitty shrieked with delight)—'he went into the cage beside a Snow leopard, a thing just like a large cat—'
It was here thatIgot so excited that I leaped up on to the bed on to the top of them.
'Oh, here's dear Loki! Come up, Loki, and hear about the leopard. Make yourself comfortable, and if youmuststick your claws in and out, do it where the clothes are thickest, that is all we ask you. Go on, Amy.'
'This man went in and the leopard was asleep in a corner. He climbed up a sort of tree and pulled its legs.'
'Brave man! Didn't he spoil his clothes and get scolded?'
'Yes, jolly well scolded by his wife who stayed outside. He said it didn't matter, for this little game would soon have to come to an end, for the leopard was getting a big boy now. It came after him rubbing about like a cat, and it lay down all curly, and invited him to play with it, and nipped the edge of his trousers, and he took it up all of a piece, as we take up Loki, and it crowded all over him, but it was happiest biting his legs and his hand. Then it got wilder and wilder and wanted him to roll over too, and he got frightened and he came out, and his wife dusted the sawdust off him.'
'Is that all the leopard?' asked Kitty.
'Yes, that is all. I wish there was some more for Loki's sake. I must not tell you about the kangaroos with their children in their pockets coming hopping across the ground up to us, it will bore poor Loki—oh, I'll tell you about the cat-house, where I saw the very king of cats that lived in Egypt and was praised.'
'How praised?' asked Kitty.
'Why, put on a high chair and said prayers to. That's praised. The man and Auntie May were talking about them and saying that they were an ugly breed of cats to be set above all the others—why, Kitty, you're asleep! Youarerude!'
'No, I'm not,' said Kitty. 'I am only pretending.'
'Nonsense! You sound all bunged up with sleep,' said Rosamond, in a queer smothery tone. 'This is my bed and I want it myself. Hoof her out, Amerye.'
'I'll go of my own self,' said Kitty, 'because you're both getting dull. Good-night, youun-lovers.'
She slipped out and went back to her crib.
'Iamrather tired, I see,' she said as she climbed in, dragging her legs after her. (I was too tired myself to go after them.) 'I'm a bit good-for-nothing, like mother. Good-night.'
Rosamond and Amerye had a fight as to which of them should haveme, but I settled that by slipping away and finding a nice high undraughty place on the chiffonnier. They always absurdly imagine we want a bed. As it was quite dark, and they weren't allowed matches, Rosamond and Amerye gave up all hope of finding me, and went to sleep, and snored, a sound which is more like our purring than anything else I ever heard.
It was the day that Auntie May and Tom and Beatrice were to come home, and the children were very anxious to welcome them in some special way. Welcoming always seems with children to mean doing something they like, and that the grown-up people are not likely to like, and this is exactly what happened.
They told Mrs. Gilmour a little about it, but not all, and asked if she did not think dressing-up was the best way of welcoming father and mother. It is extraordinary how naughty old ladies can be, far worse than children, when they give their minds to it.
Mrs. Gilmour suggested that they should all take off their skirts to begin with, and appear in their blue serge knickerbockers, and then she would see what could be done. Rosamond dirtied her face and put on a large tattered hat with no regular brim, and let one stocking fall down to show her knee, cut on purpose, and she said she was a backwoodsman out of Jules Verne. Kitty had already rather short hair, and she cut it shorter herself, till in five minutes she looked exactly like a badly barbered boy. Mrs. Gilmour let her. Did I not say she was a wicked old lady? As for Amerye, she disappeared, and I heard that she went into the housemaid's pantry and got her box of black lead and blacked herself all over with it, imitating the sweep in theWater-Babieswho went to sleep in little Ellie's room. She then went and lay down in Beatrice's pretty bed. Mrs. Gilmour never missed her; she was so busy knitting me a pair of socks—one could hardly call it a pair, Rosamond said, the only thing to do was to call it a quartette. I wished to oblige and share in the nice surprise they meant to give Beatrice, so I kept them on, all except one; for I had to have a hind paw left free ready to scratch myself with, and took up my place on the hall mat about the time Auntie May was due. I always wait for her.
At last we heard the noise of wheels. Rosamond got behind the door, and Mrs. Gilmour stood with her hand on Kitty's shoulder, who looked truly hideous, and waited, all on the broad grin.
When the trap drove up there was only Auntie May in it, the others had stopped at the east gate to speak to one of the foresters. So Auntie May had the surprise all to herself, and she seemed more surprised than pleased. She got out and cried out:
'They've sent me on to order tea. We are all frozen. How are you, Mrs. Gilmour? Who is that boy you have got with you?'
'It is a little boy I borrowed to keep me company while you were all away,' said Mrs. Gilmour, running her hands through Kitty's hair.
'What a queer-looking child! Looks as if he had water on the brain!' Auntie May said in a low voice, but Kitty heard.
Then Auntie May tookmeup in her arms and mumbled me, and kissed me. 'Sweetums! Didums! Who's been making a fool of you with your red socks? Poor lamb, get out of them at once. I see they worry you. Mercy, who is this?' as Rosamond bounced out at her. 'Rosamond, what an object! Have you been gardening? Youarefilthy. Don't come near me until you are cleaned up, please. You seem all to have quite gone mad. But never mind, so long as we get a cup of hot tea. Here's Beatrice at last. Beatrice, I have ordered tea. I simply couldn't wait!'
Those idiotic children rushed off to the schoolroom in a body and howled. Kitty had cut off her hair so that her own aunt did not know her, and the chances were that her own mother wouldn't either, she thought. In fact, the surprise had been a horrid failure. I could have told her that her own mother would know her fast enough if shechoseto, and would, moreover, punish her well for having cut off her own fur like that without waiting for the barber, who comes once a month to barber them all properly.
Sure enough, there was an awful to-do, especially when they found Amerye playing sweep in her mother's nice clean bed with pink hangings. Kitty and Amerye were sent to bed without any supper except a bit of dry bread, and Rosamond, not having done anything particular to herself—trust her not to make herself ugly!—was scolded for having allowed Kitty to cut her own hair all crooked across the forehead. Only Mrs. Gilmour, the grown-up lady who had helped it all on, got off without a scolding, as they always do.
I was scolded for one or two little things I had done while Auntie May was away, and especially for the packet of tapestry nails or pins, whatever you do call the horrid things that I shall never see again without a shudder and feeling myself all over.
'I tell you what, May,' said Beatrice. 'I am resigned to Loki's passing his nose over everything, reading postcards and docketing bills and superintending the post generally, but when it comes to opening my parcels for me, I do think it is too much. There were, I believe, a thousand nails in that packet he demolished. I can't fag to count them over now, but if their number is incomplete, I should say that the balance was in your cat's stomach.Heknows, probably.'
I didnotknow, they were such trifling, two-penny-halfpenny things that one of them might easily have stuck to my tongue in turning them over. The dread saddened my last days at Crook Hall.
On the whole it had been a very pleasant time. They had made me quite one of the family, allowing me to share their meals, their pains, their scoldings, and their games. No one could beat me at romps, but in the six-to-seven, when they played card games, I was a little out of it. There was the 'Kings of England' that Auntie May and Beatrice always quarrelled over, and the 'Flower Loto' in which Auntie May, not being a country person, seemed such a muff, and the 'Towns' game where Rosamond was such a dab because of her good memory, and the 'Pictures in the National Gallery' which was the one Kitty liked best. She was pretty quick, but she made such a hash of the pronunciation of the names of the pictures that the others laughed at her, and yet she generally won. She would say, very politely, because she knew she could not pronounce it:
'Will you give me please, Rosamond, the Fighting—oh dear, I can hardly pernounce it—the Fighting Temenare, by Turner?'
'The Fighting Temeraire, I suppose you mean, Kitty,' Rosamond would reply chillingly, not even troubling to say that she hadn't got it. 'Infant Samuel, Amerye? Look sharp!'
'Ain't got him, my dear child. Kitty, Infant Samuel?'
'Not at home, I regret to say. Rosamond, will you, if you please, give me Dignity andImperence, by Landseer, unless it is the one I see you have just let fall into thewasperbasket.'
'I can give you Dignity,' said Rosamond, forking it up out of the wastepaper basket, where, sure enough, it was where Kitty said it had fallen. 'And you have got the other, haven't you, already?'
'Theydogo together,' said Kitty, not seeing that Rosamond wanted to snub her. And that's the way they went on.
It was lovely, and I could have stayed there for ever, only at home Auntie May's papa was growing impatient. He wrote to Auntie May continually, to ask why in the name of wonder, if Beatrice was better, Auntie May didn't come home. He said slily he thought the maids were getting into bad ways, and didn't prepare the cats' meals properly, and that Petronilla was pining, and that her two kittens had ceased to obey her, in fact were becoming unmanageable.
He asked who this Mr. Fox was, and seemed to think he was the reason Auntie May didn't come home. I could have told him better than that, for whenever Mr. Fox came Auntie May said, 'What a bore! I shall have to shut poor Loki up. You hate the nasty man, Loki, don't you?'
'One tame cat always resents another,' said Mrs. Gilmour.
'Ah, do they? We shall be going home for Christmas,' said Auntie May, 'and then Mr. Fox will be able to breathe freely.'
'He lives in London in the winter, I believe,' said Beatrice.
'Well, London's wide. He won't need to run up against Loki and me any more, unless he likes,' said Auntie May, and she packed up her trunks (I know of nothing more delightful to sit in than a trunk on crackly paper, until you are turned out) and back we went.
I had become quite a good traveller by this time, and had my system. That is to lie quite still, curled round, to let nobody or nothing disturb you, and not to be persuaded to look out of the basket for love or fish till the train rushes through the tunnels into King's Cross station.
The moment we arrived at No. 100 Egerton Gardens Auntie May, finding out that her father had just gone round to his club, rushed upstairs to find her family, while I trotted at her heels, and screamed out before she had used her eyes almost:
'Oh, my darling dearest old Petronilla! They tell me that you have been pining for me.'
Mother had her nose buried in a saucer of milk, and waited a moment before she looked up, then she let Auntie May take her in her arms and 'poor-poor' her, and she herself began to purr very prettily, but still there was a good deal of difference between the two greetings. It isn't that mother has no feelings, but that she is good at hiding them. As for Zobeide and Freddy, they were biting each other's heads off at the other end of the room, and took no notice. I didn't want to distract mother from being nice to Auntie May, so I went up to my brother and sister and spoke to them. But they had no time to listen to me, and their game looked so exciting that I was roped in before I knew where I was, and Fred rolled me over and punched me with his hind legs by mistake for Zobeide. So that was all the how-do-you-do that I got, after three months' separation. As for mother, when she was done with Auntie May, she just gave me a comprehensive lick that seemed to say everything.
Home was delightful enough after that. And then mother's accident came.
Mother is still very playful for her age, and people notice it. You can get her all lengths with a bit of string, and none of us can beat her in a helter-skelter race from the top of the house to the bottom. You hear her bumping on each story like an india-rubber ball. (We could never play this game except when Mr. Graham was out. The old make everything so stiff. Auntie May had no objection.) Sometimes when we felt very fresh we chased motherupstairs, which is much more tiring, and it was when we were doing this that the accident happened.
Mother got a good start of us, and Fred was after her like a wild cat. He soon got close to her heels, and kept it up all the way to Auntie May's room at the very top of the house. The window of that room was open, but Freddy was too wild to see it. He simply chased mother across the room and out of the window, very nearly following her himself, but able to arrest his mad course on the sill just in time. I, too, managed to stop on the floor behind, and I said to my brother gravely:
'You've never gone and chased mother out of the window, Fred?'
He said, 'I am sure I don't know. Wherehasmother got to?' He seemed quite stunned.
Then Auntie May came up, quite out of breath, followed by Mary, to whom she said:
'Mary, I saw something like a streak of silver lightning go past Mr. Graham's room, where I was sorting his collars. Is it possible that it was poor Pet?'
She looked out of the window, and told Mary she could see nothing. Freddy had got into a corner under something.
'Perhaps, Miss,' said Mary, 'she's that mangled as to be unrecognisable! The young girl that fell in my mother's street was taken up all mashed up like—'
Auntie May didn't say anything at all, but just went downstairs to look if what Mary said was true. Nobody thought of preventing me and Fred, so we went along too.
Our mistress first looked all over the yard, where mother, if she reallyhadfallen out of the window, was bound to have come down. But there was nothing there. Only there was a little tiny smear of blood on the edge of the tin dustbin. I heard them say so.
Auntie May grew quite pale, and went to the other side of the house that was connected with the common garden. We followed her. There, sure enough, we all saw poor mother hiding under a laurel bush, and shaking like a leaf. Her lip was bleeding. She must have picked herself up when she first fell, and run all the way round by the tradesmen's entrance.
'Oh, mother,' cried Fred, who got to her first, 'what have you been and done to yourself?'
'Hush!' said mother. 'I cut my lip on the dustbin in falling, that's all. Bit my tongue, I think. Don't make a fuss—don't say anything!'
But Auntie May had taken poor mother up very gently in her arms, and felt her. 'Poor, poor thing! She seems quite dazed—but no bones broken, I think?'
'Oh, Miss, them cats could fall out of Heaven and not hurt theirselves, I do believe. Cat o' nine tails, indeed—'
'Nine lives, Mary. Here, come along in and get me the whisky and a spoon!'
She sat by the fire with mother spread out on her knee, and petted her and stroked her, and poured a tiny drop of whisky and water down her throat. She sat nursing her like that for two hours, mother told me afterwards, for long before that Mary had marched Freddy and me upstairs, holding us like a string of onions.
Later in the day mother was brought up and put to bed, very weak and disinclined to talk. She never scolded either Freddy or me, feeling, no doubt, that she began it by romping with us, and the matter was never discussed again.
I fell out of the very same window myself a year later. It was entirely my own fault and Mary's habit of being too free with her hands. I was quietly sitting on the window sill, watching the fat birds fly past the stone coping, and giving their children walking lessons up the tiles of the roof opposite, when Mary came in to do the room.
'Hullo, Boy!' she said, and put out her hand to stroke me. Now, I always back when people threaten to stroke me—it's a habit—and I backed on to nothing! Over I went, and I remember nothing more till I came down whack on the very identical dustbin that poor mother had cut herself on. I did not cut my lip, but I bit my tongue. I had to pick myself up, for though poor Mary, as she said, set off running downstairs as soon as she saw me begin to go, I got to the bottom first.
'Gracious goodness me! Whatever'll Miss May say? I've done for myself. Hold up yer head, will yer, and let's see if there's not some life in yer. Oh, you naughty aggravating thing to bleed at the lip so!'
'Wipe it off, can't you, Mary?' I said, and she did so with the hem of her cotton dress.
'You ain't much hurt after all!' she said, when she had cleaned me up. She did not notice that I had got my mouth all lop-sided with breaking one of my long teeth on the right side. I regretted this, for it was unsymmetrical. I was quite able to walk in, and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon on the best arm-chair.
Auntie May was out, so I didn't get any whisky, and when she came in I told her.
'Oh, what a long, long story!' said she. 'And what is it all about? Daddy, he is telling me something that has happened to him as hard as he can—such a piteous tale!'
'He threw himself out of the window, Miss,' said Mary, passing by. Of course I couldn't contradict her, and I didn't want to either, she was a good soul, was Mary, and I bore her no malice. Cats never do, it's your precious dogs that remember grievances.
'I always used to jeer,' said Auntie May to some friends who were calling next day, 'when people said that cats did not hurt themselves when they fall, but now I see they are right. Both mine have had their little experience of this kind, and I am happy to say are not one penny the worse!'
She hadn't noticed my short tooth. I found out at the cat-party how unsightly it was, and what a blemish.
A friend of Auntie May's, who had three beautiful Persians, gave a cat-party, and asked Auntie May to it. It was at four o'clock, refreshments at five, and a dark room provided for cats that would not behave or fraternise. We three had all bows of different colours, put on us for once, but at the last minute mother shirked it, and hid so that Auntie May could not find her. So she had to leave her behind. The party was not very far off, only across the garden, so she carried us one under each arm.
There were about thirty cats at Mrs. Felton's, and only nine of them were grey like us. There was a ginger cat, with a Roman ribbon round his neck, who took a fancy to me. Freddy could not be parted from a white girl-cat; he likes girls, I hate them. I mean never to marry, but Fred liked female society from the very first. Then there was a black cat who had been on the stage. He said he had been very much neglected in his youth, and once had been walking about on the tops of roofs till he got too far away from his home, and suddenly found himself, on jumping down some steps, or ladder, or something, in a great wide covered place, with people on it, shouting.
They all stopped when they saw him, and a man with a stick rapped it and said 'Attention—please, ladiesandgentlemen.'
He was the business manager, and the black cat had jumped into the middle of a dress rehearsal. The real manager was acting, and he took no notice of the black cat till he was done, and then he wouldn't have it chased away, for, said he, a black cat brings good luck to a theatre. So they fed him, and he lived there, and had perfect liberty to walk about where he pleased. He did go where he pleased, and whether they were acting or not it made no difference to him, he just walked on, so they call it, and smelt their boots, or sat on the ladies' trains, or licked up stage tea-trays if he liked. The reason he was here was that he was the guest of the manager's daughter, who had taken him off the stage because he had brought luck to her father's piece. But he often sighed for the nice merry days.