Jack was puzzled, hurt, and bitterly disappointed, and at once he went off to write a note which should be, while wildly loving, yet clear in its expressions of surprise that she had not sent him some sort of message appointing a time for their next meeting.  He found the letter unexpectedly difficult to write, and he had already torn up two beginnings, when the door behind him burst open, and, turning round irritably, he saw Timmy rush across to a window and shout exultantly, “Mum?  We’re back!  And we’ve brought Josephine and her kittens.  Mr. Trotman said she’d be all right now.”

Jack Tosswill jumped up from his chair.  It was as if his pent-up feelings of anger had found a vent at last:  “You have, have you?” he cried in an enraged voice.  “Then I’ll see to the shooting of the brute this very minute!”

Quick as thought, Timmy rushed back to the door and turned the key in the lock.  Then he bounded again to the open window.  “Mum!” he screamed at the top of his voice.  “Come here—­I’m frightened!”

Janet Tosswill, walking quickly across the lawn, was horrified at the look of angry despair on the child’s face.

“What’s happened?” she asked, and then, suddenly, she saw Jack’s blazing eyes.

“J-Janet,” he began, stuttering in his rage, “either that cat is shot to-day, or I leave this house for ever.”

Even in the midst of poor Janet’s agitation, she could not help smiling at the melodramatic tone in which the usually self-contained Jack uttered his threat.  Still—­

“It was very, very wrong of you, Timmy, to bring back your cat to-day,” she said sternly.  “Had I known there was any idea of such a thing I should have absolutely forbidden it.  Josephine is not fit to come back here yet; you know what Dr. O’Farrell said.”

The colour was coming back into Timmy’s face.  He had a touching belief in his mother’s power of saving him from the consequences of his own naughty actions.

“I’m very sorry,” he began whimperingly.  “It was not my fault, Mum.  Even Mr. Trotman said there was nothing the matter with her.”

And now Jack was beginning to repent of his hasty, cruel words.  He was as angry as ever with Timmy, but he was ashamed of having spoken as he had done to Janet—­the woman who, as he knew deep in his heart, was not only the best of step-mothers, but the best of friends, to his sisters and himself.

“Of course I don’t mind her being at Trotman’s, but I do very much object to her being here,” he said ungraciously.

“I’ll see about her being sent back to Epsom to-day,” said Janet quietly.  She turned to her son:  “Now then, Timmy, I’m afraid we shall have to ask poor Godfrey to start back at once after tea.”

“Oh, I say,” called out Jack awkwardly.  “I don’t want the cat to go as soon as that, Janet.  To-morrow will do all right.  All I ask is that the brute shall be taken away before it has a chance of seeing Mrs. Crofton again.”