THAT BOY WAS ROUGH AND PLAYED EXPERIMENTS WITH HIM.
THAT BOY WAS ROUGH AND PLAYED EXPERIMENTS WITH HIM.
THAT BOY WAS ROUGH AND PLAYED EXPERIMENTS WITH HIM.
He was put to bed, and he came out all in red spots, and he simply yelled for his black cat. The nurse took Charlie up and put him on the bed, and the little boy grabbed him and held him very uncomfortably for a long time till he got tired. He was a very clever little boy, and when his mother said to him, 'But, Teddy, you will give the poor cat your measles,' he answered, 'He can bedefectedsame as me, can't he?'
'They don't disinfectyou, my boy, only your clothes,' the mother said. 'And that is so that your clothes may not give it to any one else.'
'Then can Charlie carry a measle away on his fur?' the little boy asked, very much frightened, and began to cry because he supposed that Charlie ought to be taken away from him. They were much upset at the idea, and the nurse said in a low voice:
'We can arrange all that, ma'am; don't thwart him, whatever you do!' And so Charlie was left, but from that moment he had an uncomfortable feeling that the nurse meant to kill him when he had done his work of amusing Teddy. So when Teddy was going to get better he watched to see the sick-room door open, and ran away and came in here.
That was the first time mother had heard of the reasons that had induced him to leave his home, and she was very serious.
'I don't believe thatweare liable to measles,' she said thoughtfully. 'But you may give it to Auntie May.'
'She never takes me on her lap,' said the black cat sadly. 'I ought not to repine, for it is safer for her, and she is a nice lady. I hunger for a word of affection sometimes, though.'
'The question is, not your need of affection,' said mother severely, 'but the danger of Auntie May's getting measles. As your fur—excuse me—is not very long, perhaps you cannot carry infection like, for instance, Freddy here. We won't worry.'
I looked every day after that to see if Auntie May was coming out in red spots like little Teddy, but there was not a single measle that I could see. It was, however, a nasty scare, and mother said Charlie was little better than an adventurer, and ought not to have come in like that without any references at all.
He was a battered old thing, too; very shabby and ailing, and seemed to have been very much knocked about in general. The skin of both his ears showed bare and furless where another cat had taken hold of him. His long mean tail was broken off sharp at the end, where it had been caught in a trap, out hunting for rabbits on the sly. And he had had an awful adventure once in France, where he had been taken by some English people and left on the farm which they hired for the summer. There some French child had had the bright idea of putting him on a smart collar of twisted rushes plaited up into a string. The child made it a little too big, not big enough for him to be able to get it off, but big enough for him to get his paw through and nearly his whole front-leg. He said he thought himself very clever to do this, but he bitterly regretted it, for he could not get the leg back and had to walk on three. Nobody on the French farm noticed it, and as it was they never fed him. French people never do feed dogs hardly, and cats never. They are not nice to animals. He says he never saw a dog or cat properly covered with flesh the whole time he was there; they were all wretched scrags. Well, the trouble with poor Charlie was that he couldn't catch any mice or birds to speak of, and he was nearly starving. He thought that he grew rather light-headed, for one day, in his extreme misery, he ran away into the woods and made up his mind to die. The place where his leg was pressing on his neck got sore—the collar rubbed it, I suppose—and he couldn't reach up to lick it, and so the paw got stuck to his body and began to fester, and caused him great pain.
After about a week of starvation he happened to see a lady bathing in the river, who, when she had come out and dried herself, pulled a little bread and meat out of a napkin, and ate something and drank something on the edge of the stream. He went up to her, and she noticed him and called him, but he was too wild and shy to dare to go near her. He was ashamed of himself and the figure he cut.
However, she left half her luncheon and rolled it out on the grass for him, and he came down from a sort of perch he had in a tree and ate it.
Next day the lady came and bathed again, and again he did not dare to go near her, although she again left the remains of her luncheon for him. This went on for about a week. She at last brought another lady with her, and the other lady said she was sure that there was something wrong with that black cat, if only he would come near enough for them to see. She hinted that perhaps if she could find out the damage she might be able to do something for him. He heard, still he dared not go near them, for he had a stupid notion that if they once got hold of him they might tie up his other leg. You see, since a mere child had done such a cruel thing to him he distrusted everybody. The other lady said nothing, but one day when he had ventured a little nearer to her than usual, she was very quick and threw a large napkin all over him. He got all mixed up in it, not being as nimble as he would have liked to be, with his arm tied up, and thus he found himself a prisoner.
And glad he was that he had fallen into her hands, although, indeed, at first, he gave himself up for lost. The lady had a pair of scissors hanging to her girdle, and she held him firmly by the scruff of the neck while her companion gripped him by the hind legs to prevent his scratching her, which in his excitement and nervousness he would have been sure to do, and the band of rushes was cut and thrown aside. Then he said their exclamations completely reassured him and he ceased to struggle.
'Oh, poor creature! His paw has grown right on to his neck! What an awful sore! I can hardly bear to look at it!'
Theydidlook at it, however, and washed it with fresh water from the stream, and cut all the matted bobbedy hair away from the part; still he could not put his paw to the ground. He was quite good and patient, and he tried to show gratitude in his eyes.
'He is a rare ugly beast!' one of them said. 'I feel like St. Vincent de Paul! Do you think he would go in the luncheon basket, and could we make him a bed of rushes and grass in it and take him home?'
The other one objected, but only faintly, and the long and the short of it was they carried him home to the house which they rented on a farm, and looked after him most kindly, washing his sore with warm water every day, and smearing it with nice clean ointment. That was not all. They took him to England and put him in a cat's home, paying eighteen-pence a week for him. From there some one bought him—the mistress of Mrs. Murch. That brings him down to the time when we first knew him; and indeed, when I think of the good stories he had to tell, I am sorry he ever left us.
A week after that Auntie May did not come down to breakfast, and Mary looked fussy and important as if something had happened, and a certain great carriage came and stood at our door, which mother said was a doctor's carriage. We heard Mary and the cook talking about it.
'It's measles, sure enough,' said Mary. 'Mrs. Curtis's little boy, t'other side of the square, died of it last week. It is all over. You and me'll go next, cook, sure as eggs is eggs.'
'Eggs is often egg powder,' said the cook severely. 'You just sit still and don't go to meet misfortune half-way. More work and less talk, I say.'
We told the black cat that he was little better than a murderer, bringing measles in and giving them to our dear Auntie May, and we made him so uncomfortable that he left. I don't suppose he would starve or anything, for he had collected enough strength with us to last him through the winter, and make him fit to catch as many birds as he could eat. Besides, I don't think he was going to live long anyhow. To my certain knowledge he had licked up a whole tube of madder-lake, and swallowed the cork of a bottle of quick-drying copal.
Mary was not a good cat-maid, though she had acquired what Auntie May called the cat-tread. She had learned to walk carefully, shovelling her feet along the floor so as to avoid treading on kittens. Of course, now that we were older, we oozed away ourselves, and were too proud to call out if a paw got caught, or so on.
Then an awful thing happened, and while Auntie May was ill too. Perhaps if Auntie May hadn't been ill it would never have happened. Zobeide went and lost herself.
We all went out now and then, though it wasn't approved of unless Auntie May took us herself, and that was all right; it was going alone that was wrong. Whenever we were missed there was a fine hue and cry, and Auntie May used to run out without her boots, or her hat, or her jacket, and hunt the garden. When she had done this in vain, she used to go out in the street and walk all round the fronts of the houses to see if she could see a bit of grey cat sticking out anywhere. She gotmethat way once. I was sitting on the outside wall looking inwards and my tail hung down into the street. She came along and took hold, and wow! but I had to come down backwards along with it! I felt as if it were being pulled out by the roots, and that all resistance was vain and painful as well. So I was amenable to persuasion, if you can call anything so rough as that persuasion.
There was no Auntie May to fetch Zobeide in. She wasn't even told lest it sent up her temperature. Besides, I fancied some one had stolen Zobeide, and I remembered that Auntie May once said that one merit of having valuable cats was that if they got lost or were stolen it wasn't to do them harm; that the thief would cherish every hair of the coat of a Blue Persian, and that it was only a question of change of residence and missing the departed, without the agony of imagining all sorts of horrid fates that might have befallen them. She said she could never sleep at night if she had to think of the possibility of our coming upon the streets and being carried off to be vivisected. Perhaps poor Charlie got vivisected! Oh dear!
Mother and I and Fred did not break our hearts or care half so much about Zobeide as poor Mr. Graham did. He took an immense lot of trouble, and went to the police station about her, and when he came home he wrote on a great piece of paper, in copy-book hand:
LOSTValuable Persian CatOn the Thirty-first instant fromNo. 100 Egerton Gardens.Whoever will bring the same back to owner will receivethe sum of Five Pounds.
This he had printed, and mother says she heard that a copy was stuck in the window of every shop in the district. Of course that curious Mary had to go out and spy them all out and come home and tell cook.
We were a great deal in the kitchen at this period, and liked it in a way. It was warmer than anywhere else in the house, and there were plenty of odd things good to eat, though Auntie May strictly forbade Mary or cook to feed us between meals. Our meals were always arranged beforehand. For instance, Fred could not eat fish—it always made him sick. He also liked a thing better if he had stolen it. When he was ill and wouldn't eat his bread and milk they put it on the china-table to tempt him, and it did. He would eat all quickly, thinking he would get shooed off every other minute. Mother could not bear lentils; she had never been brought up to them, she said. Now I loved them, also cod-liver-oil biscuits. None of us could stand salt meat or veal, but game, of course, was heaven. We had different ways with the bones. I like to split mine up and get the juice that is inside the bone out and suck it. Mother thought it would hurt our teeth, and she only picked hers. As she was getting a little old, she had raw meat twice a week to strengthen her, and in the winter Auntie May always gave her cod-liver-oil. What she really liked best was burnt currants out of a cake. She used to sit at Auntie May's elbow and pick them out of her mouth. I have a weakness for anchovy sandwiches, and Auntie May always gratifies it.
So you see we are rather a nuisance with our various likes and dislikes; but I am bound to say cook and Mary were very good while Auntie May's illness lasted, and did not alter the menu in the least. The measles lasted an age. I cannot count time, so I don't know, but I remember very clearly the first day when Auntie May was 'safe'—able to see us, I mean. She had been away to the seaside before that time, and I heard Mary say that when she came back she might go anywhere and see who she liked.
Mary tied bows of ribbon on all our necks against her home-coming; she thought Auntie May wouldn't mind for once, and cook and she thought that she didn't really ever keep us smart enough.
I tried not to get mine worked round to my chin so as to oblige Mary; but Fred got his mixed up with sardine-oil about an hour before she came, and had to have it taken off.
We were all in her study when she came in, and I was determined she should not complain of the coldness of our welcome this time, so we all rushed at her.
'Mercy! What a lot of little catapults!' said she. The day was cold, for it was nearly autumn, and she threw off her coat, not caring how dreadfully distracting it was to Freddy. He bore it well, though, and left the most fascinating bobble untouched lest she should feel neglected.
'Where is Zobeide?' she said suddenly. 'Mary! Mary!' for Mary had bolted.
'I simply cannot rest till I find Zobeide,' she muttered, going to cupboard doors and opening them. 'The darling! Where is she, Mary? Mary!'
It is always the way. She had gotus, but people always want the one they haven't got, and then take not the slightest interest in the ones that have been good and stayed at home; for, of course, as every one knew, Zobeide was up to no good when she got herself stolen. Auntie May got quite mad with anxiety, and opened the door of her room and met Mary on the threshold.
'Mary, please, where is Zobeide?'
'Lost, Miss. Mr. Fox have called.'
Auntie May banged the door and went down to see Mr. Fox. I suppose Mary told her about Zobeide on the way downstairs, that is if she cared any more to listen. People are so funny!
It was the beginning of the end.
Mr. Fox's sister sent word she wanted to buy a cat, either me or Fred. Auntie May told us when she came upstairs that evening after Mr. Fox had gone. (He had stayed two whole hours.) She said:
'I think I shall sell Fred, because only last night he emptied my wastepaper basket, mixed my unanswered letters with the thrown-away ones, and added a paper of tin tacks and a box of boracic-acid powder to the mess. Fred is too good to live. I hear Mr. Fox's sister is very severe with the animals about her place, so, Freddy, you will be heavily corrected for your misdemeanours. Yes, you are cut out for a country cat! Your little manners are shocking. Freddy Orson! You ought to be called Orson.'
Freddy didn't quite understand that he was being disapproved of, but he got on her knee in a friendly way and curled round and rubbed his long tooth against the left wing of her nose, causing her thereby great discomfort. He meant well, but it all went to prove what she said, that his manners were not refined. Mother and I thought he had better go, but indeed we were not consulted. He went in a basket. Mother didn't say goodbye to him formally. I don't think she noticed.
Then Rosamond came down to stay in Egerton Gardens, and I got at the truth of the situation from her. She was now sixteen, and had grown quite ugly. Children, they say, grow in and out. Well, she was 'out' now. She was a very sensible girl, though.
'I believe Mr. Fox is very fond of you, Auntie May,' she said one day, 'and would like to marry you, but he simply can't get at you for your cats.'
'Oh, that is what you think, do you?' said Auntie May, not taking much notice of her, but going on with what she was doing very hard.
'Yes, and he is trying to exterminate them one by one,' said Rosamond. 'You see he has got rid of Freddy, and very soon he will be making you an offer for Loki. As for dear old Petronilla, anybody can see that he won't have to wait long for her, she is on her last legs. Oh, Auntie dear, say you will marry him when Petronilla dies, and thenseeif he doesn't manage to give her poison.'
'Rosamond, what an odious suggestion! Mr. Fox is very nice—much too nice to do that—and besides, as I said to him, "Love me, love my cats."'
'Ah, so you have spoken to him about it?' gibed the horrid little girl. 'Now youhavegiven yourself away. Well, what does Mr. Fox say? Does he love you enough to wait for Petronilla's death?'
'Don't talk nonsense, child. I am not going to marry Mr. Fox at all, whether Pet were to die to-morrow or live to be a hundred, as I am sure I hope she will, poor lamb! As for Mr. Fox, our tastes are too absolutely dissimilar for anything of that kind to be possible.'
'Quite possible,Ithink, if only the cat difficulty could be got over,' said that naughty Rosamond. 'I believe you two adore each other! And aren't you grateful to him for bringing your horrid cat—horrid from his point of view I mean—across to Paris for you? I think it was angelic, like a knight of old, performing terribly difficult tasks to please his lady.'
'Will you hold your silly little tongue? Go and do your health exercises!'
That was the way she always got rid of Rosamond, by some order or another. You see Rosamond, though she was sixteen, still had to obey. Yet though Auntie May was older than Rosamond, that child could turn her round her little finger.
Luckily mother was not in the room when Rosamond said those nasty things about her age. But I thought over them deeply. It was true mother had grown very thin and weak lately; several times I have heard Mary say when lifting her up:
'Why, she don't weigh no more than a feather!'
Her eyes were so big and bright they seemed to swallow up her whole face. I wondered how long Mr. Fox thought he would have to wait? I wondered how long we cats usually live, but, of course, I did not like to ask mother for fear of making her think about death. I remember her once telling me that when her time came to die she would not like anybody to be there. She would try to get away into a corner somewhere, and not be found till all was over.
That is cat's way all over the world, and I believe the way of dogs too.
I wonder if that was the way that Admiral Togo died?
One morning Auntie May got a letter from Mrs. Dillon. She read it aloud to Rosamond as long as she could without crying, and then Rosamond took it by her permission and read it too aloud tillshecried. But this way I got it all.
Rondebosch,February 12, 18—.My dear May—I have had a great sorrow. Togo is dead. My maid and I fought for his life so hard that I thought hemustlive. I could have borne it better if I could have felt that it wasreallyinevitable—but the shocking ignorance we have had to contend with has been incredible. From the first moment of our seeing anything wrong we sought in every possible direction for help. They always said it was malaria, and that I was to nurse him up and feed him as his only chance. When at last I got hold of a vet whodidknow his business, he said the poor little thing was dying of pleurisy—temperature a hundred and five! He said it was too late for tapping, and he gave him a little whiff of chloroform which sent him quietly to his last sleep. I could not bear that he should go through any more doubtful cruel remedies. If my maid had lost an only child she could not have felt it more, after having nursed that cat night and day for so long. It has made me quite ill. I do always love things so passionately, and this was more than a pet. He was with me constantly, and I knew he was turning into a baby! Over and over again I have said, 'He istoogood, he will never live to grow up!' He was like Hans Andersen's Mermaid, he was getting a soul, and indeed he won it at last, in the only way possible, through love and well-borne pain. The last fortnight he was almost human, his eyes had lost the mere animal stare, and looked up constantly into ours for love and help, which we could not give, alas! He lay most of the time in my arms or in my maid's, and had grown so thin we had to carry him about in a shawl. He lost two and a half pounds in three weeks—
Rondebosch,February 12, 18—.
My dear May—I have had a great sorrow. Togo is dead. My maid and I fought for his life so hard that I thought hemustlive. I could have borne it better if I could have felt that it wasreallyinevitable—but the shocking ignorance we have had to contend with has been incredible. From the first moment of our seeing anything wrong we sought in every possible direction for help. They always said it was malaria, and that I was to nurse him up and feed him as his only chance. When at last I got hold of a vet whodidknow his business, he said the poor little thing was dying of pleurisy—temperature a hundred and five! He said it was too late for tapping, and he gave him a little whiff of chloroform which sent him quietly to his last sleep. I could not bear that he should go through any more doubtful cruel remedies. If my maid had lost an only child she could not have felt it more, after having nursed that cat night and day for so long. It has made me quite ill. I do always love things so passionately, and this was more than a pet. He was with me constantly, and I knew he was turning into a baby! Over and over again I have said, 'He istoogood, he will never live to grow up!' He was like Hans Andersen's Mermaid, he was getting a soul, and indeed he won it at last, in the only way possible, through love and well-borne pain. The last fortnight he was almost human, his eyes had lost the mere animal stare, and looked up constantly into ours for love and help, which we could not give, alas! He lay most of the time in my arms or in my maid's, and had grown so thin we had to carry him about in a shawl. He lost two and a half pounds in three weeks—
It was here that Rosamond broke down and the letter was put away. Auntie May settled to give Mrs. Dillon another kitten, a brother of Togo's, so perhaps he might be as nice.
But the new family of kittens were rather wretched-looking little things, and I sniffed over them a great deal, till mother told me that I myself had looked neither better nor worse than they did. I enjoyed helping to mind them, and often I was trusted to get into the basket and keep them warm while mother stretched her legs. A day or two after they were born mother said:
'I shall never have any more, so I mean to do my duty by these!' I think that meant she fancied she was going to die soon, and I have no doubt Auntie May knew it too, and told Mr. Fox so.
Then Beatrice came to stay in London with us for a week, and she spoke to Auntie May very severely about Mr. Fox.
'May, you are a fool,' she said. 'I am fond of animals myself, but I shouldn't let them interfere with things of real importance.'
'It is unfortunate,' said Auntie May in a cold, horrid tone, 'that I should happen to fall in love with the only man I know who cannot be in the same room with a cat. It is too absurd. But what can I do?'
'Do, silly girl? Sell all this lot of kittens before you have time to get fond of them; leave Petronilla with Dad, and they can be the prop of each other's declining years—that is Dad's phrase, not mine, he said it to me only this morning—and I—yes, I will have Loki, and Tom shall take up every blessed trap on the place—I'll make him. There, will that suit you?'
'But I have got so used to having cats about. Must I be condemned to live without a cat for all the rest of my life?'
'May, I have no patience with you. You must give up something.'
'Why can'thegive up something, instead of me?'
'You may be quite sure he does give up something—heaps of things—to please you. He is willing to give up smoking—'
'Yes, it makes me sick. But why should any one mind cats? It is absurd that such a silly prejudice as that can't be got over.'
'Well really, if cats makehim, and smoking makesyousick, I consider it a very fair exchange. I say, look at Loki, now, I should take that kitten away from him if I were you, he is licking it to a pulp.'
Auntie May got up and took the kitten away from me. I had worked very hard at it, and had made it quite wet. I thought I had done well. I know I took pains. I had got my paws round its neck to steady it, and it said nothing. I must say it looked rather shrunken and flattened out thin when they took it away, but I believe Beatrice only mentioned it, and objected to what I was doing to it, to change the conversation. She probably thought she had been going on at May too long.
All this time I had never seen the blessed Mr. Fox who was upsetting us all so. I was kept carefully out of his way. Consequently I didn't see much of my mistress.
But one day I was in the studio under a console, behind the dummy, behind Rosamond's portrait, in fact a good way off, and with a good many artistic smells between me and Mr. Fox, who had come to see Auntie May, and had been shown in there as the drawing-room was untidy and having something done to it, and Mr. Graham was out varnishing at the Royal Academy. Auntie May knew she had shut the door of her study, and considered that I therefore could not possibly be anywhere but safe upstairs. I wasn't in when she shut it, however, you see. I did not show myself to them, tactfully, but tried to get out, following the skirting board all the way to the door. There were heaps of things propped up against the walls, and it was slow work. Besides, Mr. Fox for once did not seem at all affected by my presence.
I had only got half round the room when I heard Auntie May say:
'Mr. Fox—' she hesitated a little, 'it might interest you perhaps to know that I have decided to let Beatrice take Loki, while Pet stays behind with Dad!'
Poor Mr. Fox turned bright red, not pale as he generally does in the presence of a cat, and said:
'Behind—did you say?'
'Behind me—that is, if you takemeaway—'
When Auntie May said that, in a little voice, it seemed to please Mr. Fox very much, though it was a simple enough thing to say. They sat down on a sofa together and talked, and I thought it a good opportunity to make finally for the door.
Unfortunately one of the pictures against the wall was stood up too straight, and when I came out from behind it it fell down with a clatter. Auntie May got up and came to where I was, and when she saw me she gave a little jump, and put her finger to her mouth and went back to Mr. Fox.
'Henry,' she said, 'how do you feel?'
'I never felt better in my life, dear,' he answered. 'Since you gave me your promise the whole air of the world seems changed. I could move mountains, I feel so fit—'
'Yet the air of the studio,' she said, 'is not particularly pure. The smell of paint rags, and varnishes, and stale tobacco, andcats—'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that my beloved Loki has been here in the room with you for the last half-hour, and yet you have been praising the purity of the air and exulting in your "fitness." Oh, Henry, perhaps you have got over it?—say you have! Then I shall be quite happy!'
'Perhaps I have,' said he. 'You, by your presence, are able to dispel evil influences—temporarily, at any rate. We will try.'
'No, Loki goes to Beatrice's all the same,' she said sadly, and put me gently out of the door.
I myself think it was the smell of the turpentines and varnishes, and so on, that she had spoken of that made Mr. Fox not notice me, and I foresaw that I should not see much more of my mistress in the time to come.
She married Mr. Fox in less than a month's time, and I have never seen her cry so much in her life as on her wedding day when she kissed mother and me and bade us goodbye. She kissed us twice, once before she went to the church, and we got tangled up in her veil, and the smell of orange blossoms (real, in her hair, that Mrs. Jay sent from Paris) nearly made us ill, but we were proud to be so loved, and wished we could follow her to the altar.
SHE MARRIED MR. FOX IN LESS THAN A MONTH.
SHE MARRIED MR. FOX IN LESS THAN A MONTH.
SHE MARRIED MR. FOX IN LESS THAN A MONTH.
Beatrice, in dove-coloured taffeta, to show that she was going to love us dearly, and didn't think any frock too good for us, held us in her arms too, and gave us a chance of crushing her trimmings, but she didn't care, for it made Auntie May happy and sent her down with a smile on her face. Rosamond, Amerye, and Kitty were her bridesmaids, and very nice they looked, but I didn't take much notice of them, knowing that I was going to spend the rest of my life with them in Yorkshire. Tom met me on the staircase, just as I was stealing down to see some of the fun.
'Hollo, little beggar!' he said. 'Where are you off to so fast? Don't you go near the bridegroom for your life, he is shaky enough already. Back to barracks, back to barracks, young man!' and he took me by the scruff of my neck and walked me upstairs to the study again. So I never had another sight of Auntie May's husband, then or afterwards.
Auntie May stays with Beatrice sometimes without him, but not for long. They live in the summer at Shortleas. Of course she often comes over for the day. When he comes with her I am carefully kept out of the way, and, indeed, I fall in with their plans cheerfully, and arrange to spend a good deal of time in the garden and employ myself as well as I can, for I am becoming quite an outside cat now, and catch birds and mice. One's sentiment becomes blunted with age, I find. I don't suffer over my hunting proclivities as I used to do. Tom calls me the sporting cat, and wouldn't shoot me for the world, I am too useful. Beatrice is proud of me and my ruff, and shows me to visitors when she can get me in in time. I always come when she calls me, unless I am in the middle of a bird, and then I bring it along to show her why I dawdled. She always screams and hides her face, and says:
'Oh, take it away, Loki, don't show itme! I suppose youmust, but I needn't know it!'
All the same, I know she thinks me smart to have caught it, and I never spare her a bird.
Auntie May's baby has two nurses to itself. They come and stay here what Beatrice callsad lib, while Auntie May and Mr. Fox are visiting on the 'continong,' as the head nurse says. Of course Beatrice is very glad to have them. The under nurse is a child, not much bigger than Rosamond, and far more meddlesome than a child. This is the sort of thing she does.
Since I have been here I have learned that there are such things as swallows—fidgety birds, that winter abroad like Auntie May and Mr. Fox, and that I would as soon think of eating as I would of eating the baby. I feel a sort of relationship, too, as if swallows were the 'smoke-blues' among birds; their fur is the kind of blue we are, only darker, and they are not at all a common kind of bird.
One summer a swallow built its nest in a tool-house not far off the tree where the nurse and baby and Lotty used to take the pram and sit all the afternoon. Lotty had not much to do; the nurse would hardly trust her with baby, so she played about and pried into other people's affairs. She discovered the swallow's nest high up under the eaves, where nothing except a Lotty could possibly reach it. She poked away at it with a stick, and pushed it down.
Therewasa scene! Rosamond was so cross! When she was told, she ran straight into the shed where Lotty told her all the birds were lying about on the ground. She first bade the head nurse hold me and hide my face under her dress, lest I should see her go in and learn where the birds were. As if I did not know, and as if I should touch them! The nurse put me into the pram beside the baby and rocked us both; and I liked that, and lay quite still and waited for Rosamond to come back out of the tool-house and tell us all about it. She soon came back and sat down beside nurse and Tom, who had come out too. Lotty sneaked away crying.
'That little fool!' said Rosamond. 'What did she want to go into the tool-shed for? One of the birds is not to be found, but I have picked up the nest and two of the nestlings, and put them back and jammed the remnants of the nest against the wall somehow. Will they live? The only thing is that they would have been ready to fly in a day or two. Perhaps the mother will come back and feed them? We must put a saucer of bread and milk there. And keep Loki away. You must promise faithfully not to go near the place to see, nurse. As for Lotty, she will never look at a swallow again, I should hope. Ignorant meddling little thing!'
All the rest of that afternoon did I sit quietly beside the head nurse, with my eye fixed on that shed. By and by I counted as many as ten swallows flying in and out continually—making a great fuss, in fact. I promised myself to go there and see for myself after dark.
But I was saved from committing a very vile and foolish action. Of course the sight of a cat, however harmless, would have driven away the relations of the little swallows for ever! About a couple of hours later, however, Rosamond went into the shed, and told Beatrice what she had seen.
'They have found the other swallow. There are three in the nest. I looked. They must have heaved it up off the ground somehow on their broad flat backs. Oh how I wish I had seen them do it! And it looks—I can't actually swear it—as if some of the bread and milk had gone! Wonderful creatures! Now in a day or two the nestlings will probably fly away, and I shall be able to forgive Lotty!'
Sure enough, a few days after this the nest was empty. There was no other cat about the place but me, and I had not been near the shed, but had relied solely for information on what I heard Rosamond tell Beatrice. The nurse had, I am sorry to say, so little faith in human nature that she believed to the last that I had eaten them all, but Beatrice and Rosamond knew that I had not; they would have seen it in my eyes if I had, so they said.
I am called Rosamond's cat. It is Rosamond that I sit on the mat for when she is out and run to when she comes home. I am very fond of Rosamond, and I think her very good. I suppose that is the reason her mother is so fond of her. That is the one thing I can never understand. I never saw Beatrice 'bat' Rosamond as my mother 'batted' me. Instead, I see Rosamond, at sixteen, get on to her mother's knee and sit there. Beatrice evidently knows quite well that Rosamond is her child. I often wonder if Rosamond went away for a long while, whether Beatrice would not forget her, as mother forgot me while I was in Paris?
Perhaps if they do decide to send her to Paris to be 'finished,' which is talked of, when she comes back they will alter their ways, and behave like ordinary people. Rosamond doesn't go to school, but has a new governess every three months or so, so it shows that they do take pains with her.
I am not sure that I am not the reason they keep her at home. She could not look after me if she were away at school, and as it is, she is everything to me. Of course I never can love any one as much as Auntie May; even now when I see her I can't mew for happiness. I just lie in her lap and say nothing for hours, and she says to Beatrice:
'Iwonderif Loki really remembers me?'
Oh, I am remembering all the time, only I can't say it! Why, there is an old fur jacket of hers that she left here once for Rosamond that I simply never let Rosamond have. I lay on it and covered it with grey hairs, that won't brush off, thank goodness! So that in the end Beatrice has given up all idea of taking it away from me, and it is called Loki's coat, not Rosamond's.
Rosamond sometimes looks at me sitting on it, and pretends to shriek, and says:
'I should be so warm this winter if Loki hadn't taken my nice winter coat for himself!'
I blink at her, and stretch out my paw, for I know it is all fun. What is Auntie May's smell, that is all over that dear coat, to Rosamond, compared with what it is to me? The oddest thing of all is that they none of Them seem to imagine how awfully fond I am of Auntie May, and how I hate Mr. Fox for taking my mistress away from me!
One of these days at breakfast time there came a letter from Auntie May, and they told me my mother was dead. Kitty tied a bit of black ribbon round my paw. They don't understand. I kept it on till dinner-time to please the child.
A month later some one told me that Auntie May had found Zobeide again at a cat-show at the Crystal Palace—or at least a cat that she was surewasZobeide from some secret signs she knew. She took a prize, anyway. I gather that Auntie May was not able to make good her claim on the cat. Fancy, nearly two years afterwards! Why, I am very much altered since the day I was here first, and whacked Great-Uncle Tomyris in the looking-glass in Beatrice's room. I saw him again the other day. He looks older too, if a ghostcanlook older. I am not afraid of him any more. I am bored by him, and don't care to raise so much as a paw to him.
I am really a very happy cat. I never worry. I eat brown bread. The only bad thing thatcouldhappen to me, I think, would be that my new mistress, Rosamond Gilmour, should go and choose a Mr. Fox for herself, and then I should be thrown on the world again.
Of course, shemaymarry, but I believe in that case she would take me with her, and luckily the tribe of Foxes is not common.
THE END
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