A cat, friendly as the shoemaker himself, leapt on to Padna’s lap.  The shoemaker shifted the shoe he was stitching between his knees, putting the heel where the toe had been.

“Do you know where they first discovered electricity?” he asked.

“In America,” Padna ventured.

“No.  In the back of a cat.  He was a big buck Chinese cat.  Every hair on him was seven inches long, in colour gold, and thick as copper wire.  He was the only cat who ever looked on the face of the Empress of China without blinking, and when the Emperor saw that he called him over and stroked him on the back.  No sooner did the Emperor of China stroke the buck cat than back he fell on his plush throne, as dead as his ancestors.  So they called in seven wise doctors from the seven wise countries of the East to find out what it was killed the Emperor.  And after seven years they discovered electricity in the backbone of the cat, and signed a proclamation that it was from the shock of it the Emperor had died.  When the Americans read the proclamation they decided to do whatever killing had to be done as the cat had killed the Emperor of China.  The Americans are like that—­all for imitating royal families.”

“Has this cat any electricity in her?” Padna asked.

“She has,” said the shoemaker, drawing his wax-end.  “But she’s a civilised cat, not like the vulgar fellow in China, and civilised cats hide their electricity much as civilised people hide their feelings.  But one day last summer I saw her showing her electricity.  A monstrous black rat came prowling from the brewery, a bald patch on his head and a piece missing from his left haunch.  To see that fellow coming up out of a gullet and stepping up the street, in the middle of the broad daylight, you’d imagine he was the county inspector of police.”

“And did she fight the rat?” Padna asked.

The shoemaker put the shoe on a last and began to tap with his hammer.  “She did fight him,” he said.  “She went out to him twirling her moustaches.  He lay down on his back.  She lay down on her side.  They kept grinning and sparring at each other like that for half an hour.  At last the monstrous rat got up in a fury and come at her, the fangs stripped.  She swung round the yard, doubled in two, making circles like a Catherine-wheel about him until the old blackguard was mesmerised.  And if you were to see the bulk of her tail then, all her electricity gone into it!  She caught him with a blow of it under the jowl, and he fell in a swoon.  She stood over him, her back like the bend of a hoop, the tail beating about her, and a smile on the side of her face.  And that was the end of the monstrous brewery rat.”

Padna said nothing, but put the cat down on the floor.  When she made some effort to regain his lap he surreptitiously suggested, with the tip of his boot, that their entente was at an end.

A few drops of rain beat on the window, and the shoemaker looked up, his glasses shining, the bumps on his forehead gleaming.  “Do you know the reason God makes it rain?” he asked.