“I don’t know how he come to take it that cross way, for he hadn’t thought highly of the thing up to that moment.  But some way it seemed to him I was talking scandal about his pet—­kind of clouding up its ancestry, if you know what I mean.  He didn’t seem to get any broad view of it at all.  You’d almost think I’d been reporting an indiscretion in some member of his family.  Can you beat it?  Heating up that way over a puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he’d been thinking of as a pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle!  So he starts in from that minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies; and every time I see him after that he’d look indignant and say what great hands for spreading gossip us women are, and his kitten ain’t got no more bobcat in its veins than what I have.

“He’s a stubborn old toad.  Irene had told him the kitten’s name was Kate; so he kept right on calling it that even after it become incongruous, as you might say.  Judge Ballard was up here on a fishing trip one time and heard him calling it Kate, and he says to Egbert:  Why call it Kate when it ain’t?  Egbert says that was the name little Irene give it and it’s too much trouble to think up another.  The Judge says, Oh, no; not so much trouble, being that he could just change the name swiftly from Kate to Cato, thus meeting all conventional requirements with but slight added labour.  But Egbert says there’s the sentiment to think of—­whatever he meant by that; and if you was to go over there to-day and he was home you’d likely hear him say:  ’Yes; Kate is certainly some cat!  Why, he’s at least half bobcat—­mebbe three-quarters; and the fightingest devil!’ What’s that?  Yes; he’s changed completely round about the wildcat strain.  He’s proud of it.  If I was to say now it was only a quarter bob he’d be as mad as he was at first; he says anybody can see it’s at least half bob.  What changed him?  Oh, well, we’re too near home.  Some other time.”

So it befell that not until we sat out for a splendid sunset that evening did I learn in an orderly manner of Postlethwaite vicissitudes.  Ma Pettengill built her first cigarette with tender solicitude; and this, in consideration of her day’s hard ride, I permitted her to burn in relaxed silence.  But when her trained fingers began to combine paper and tobacco for the second I mentioned Broadmoor, Postlethwaite, Posnett, and parties in general that come round the tired business woman, harassed with the countless vexations of a large cattle ranch, telling her how wise she has been to retire to this sylvan quietude, where she can dream away her life in peace.  She started easily: