“Oh Nicky, oh you darling!” she said.

When she stroked him he got up, arching his back and carrying his tail in a flourishing curve, like one side of a lyre; he rubbed against her ankles.  A white butterfly flickered among the blue larkspurs; when Nicky saw it he danced on his hind legs, clapping his forepaws as he tried to catch it.  But the butterfly was too quick for him.  Anne picked him up and he flattened himself against her breast, butting under her chin with his smooth round head in his loving way.

And as Adeline wouldn’t listen to her Anne talked to the cat.

“Clever little thing, he sees everything, all the butterflies and the dicky-birds and the daddy-long-legs.  Don’t you, my pretty one?”

“What’s the good of talking to the cat?” said Adeline.  “He doesn’t understand a word you say.”

“He doesn’t understand the words, he says, but he feels the feeling ...  He was the most beautiful of all the pussies, he was, he was.”

“Nonsense.  You’re throwing yourself away on that absurd animal, for all the affection you’ll get out of him.”

“I shall get out just what I put in.  He expects to be talked to.”

“So do I.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you all afternoon and you won’t listen.  And you don’t know how you can hurt Nicky’s feelings.  He’s miserable if I don’t tell him he’s a beautiful pussy the minute he comes into my room.  He creeps away under the washstand and broods.  We take these darling things and give them little souls and hearts, and we’ve no business to hurt them.  And they’ve such a tiny time to live, too...  Look at him, sitting up to be carried, like a child.”

“Oh wait, my dear, till you have a child.  You ridiculous baby.”

“Oh come, Jerrold’s every bit as gone on him.”

“You’re a ridiculous pair,” said Adeline.

“If Nicky purred round your legs, you’d love him, too,” said Anne.

iv

Uncle Robert was not well.  He couldn’t eat the things he used to eat; he had to have fish or chicken and milk and beef-tea and Benger’s food.  Jerrold said it was only indigestion and he’d be all right in a day or two.  But you could see by the way he walked now that there was something quite dreadfully wrong.  He went slowly, slowly, as if every step tired him out.

“Sorry, Jerrold, to be so slow.”

But Jerrold wouldn’t see it.

They had gone down to the Manor Farm, he and Jerrold and Anne.  He wanted to show Jerrold the prize stock and what heifers they could breed from next year.  “I should keep on with the short horns.  You can’t do better,” he said.

Then they had gone up the fields to see if the wheat was ready for cutting yet.  And he had kept on telling Jerrold what crops were to be sown after the wheat, swedes to come first, and vetch after the swedes, to crowd out the charlock.

“You’ll have to keep the charlock down, Jerrold, or it’ll kill the crops.  You’ll have the devil of a job.”  He spoke as though Jerrold had the land already and he was telling him the things he wanted him to remember.