“Really?  Where?  I thought they only did that to the dear horses.  Oh, what a pretty laugh you have!  It’s so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in these days.”

“I thought no one did anything else!  I mean, what else can you do, except die, don’t you know?”

“I think that’s rather a gloomy view,” said the old lady placidly.  But about your neighbour.  What is his name?”

“Lavender.  But I call him Don Pickwixote.”

“Dear me, do you indeed?  Have you noticed anything very eccentric about him?”

“That depends on what you call eccentric.  Wearing a nightshirt, for instance?  I don’t know what your standard is, you see.”

The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden was heard saying: 

“Blink!  Don’t touch that charming mooncat!”

“Hush!” murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor’s arm, she drew her vigorously beneath the acacia tree.  Sheltered from observation by those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.

“If you see me going to laugh,” whispered the young lady, “pinch me hard.”

“Moon-cat,” repeated Mr. Lavender, “where have you come from?  And what do you want, holding up your paw like that?  What curious little noises you make, duckie!” The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a duck.  It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself against Blink’s chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver, brushed her mouth.

“This is extraordinary,” they heard Mr. Lavender say; “I would stroke it if I wasn’t so stiff.  How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to my play-girl!  For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as friendliness between a dog and cat!”

At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.

“Not yet!” whispered the latter in some agony.  “Listen!”

“Moon-cat,” Mr. Lavender was saying, “Arcadia is in your golden eyes.  You have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from it.”  And too stiff to reach the cat by bending, Mr. Lavender let himself slowly down till he could sit.  “Pan is dead,” he said, as he arrived on the grass and crossed his feet, “and Christ is not alive.  Moon-cat!”

The little cat had put its head into his hand, while Blink was thrusting her nose into his mouth.

“I’m going to sneeze!” whispered the old lady, strangely affected.

“Pull your upper lip down hard, like the German Empress, and count nine!” murmured the young.

While the old lady was doing this Mr. Lavender had again begun to speak.