Part 16 (1/2)

”No,” responded his mother thoughtfully, ”you're right there. His legs are his weak point. I can't say I think much of his legs myself.”

”Maybe they'll fill out later on,” suggested the friend, kindly.

”Oh, I hope so,” replied the mother, regaining her momentarily dashed cheerfulness. ”Oh yes, they'll come all right in time. And then look at his tail. Now, honestly, did you ever see a kitten with a finer tail?”

”Yes, it's a good tail,” a.s.sented the other; ”but why do you do it up over his head?”

”I don't,” answered our cat. ”It goes that way. I can't make it out. I suppose it will come straight as he gets older.”

”It will be awkward if it don't,” said the friend.

”Oh, but I'm sure it will,” replied our cat. ”I must lick it more. It's a tail that wants a good deal of licking, you can see that.”

And for hours that afternoon, after the other cat had gone, she sat tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it; and, at the end, when she lifted her paw off it, and it flew back again like a steel spring over the squirrel's head, she sat and gazed at it with feelings that only those among my readers who have been mothers themselves will be able to comprehend.

”What have I done,” she seemed to say--”what have I done that this trouble should come upon me?”

Jephson roused himself on my completion of this anecdote and sat up.

”You and your friends appear to have been the possessors of some very remarkable cats,” he observed.

”Yes,” I answered, ”our family has been singularly fortunate in its cats.”

”Singularly so,” agreed Jephson; ”I have never met but one man from whom I have heard more wonderful cat talk than, at one time or another, I have from you.”

”Oh,” I said, not, perhaps without a touch of jealousy in my voice, ”and who was he?”

”He was a seafaring man,” replied Jephson. ”I met him on a Hampstead tram, and we discussed the subject of animal sagacity.

”'Yes, sir,' he said, 'monkeys is cute. I've come across monkeys as could give points to one or two lubbers I've sailed under; and elephants is pretty spry, if you can believe all that's told of 'em. I've heard some tall tales about elephants. And, of course, dogs has their heads screwed on all right: I don't say as they ain't. But what I do say is: that for straightfor'ard, level-headed reasoning, give me cats. You see, sir, a dog, he thinks a powerful deal of a man--never was such a cute thing as a man, in a dog's opinion; and he takes good care that everybody knows it. Naturally enough, we says a dog is the most intellectual animal there is. Now a cat, she's got her own opinion about human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it. The consequence is, we says a cat's got no intelligence. That's where we let our prejudice steer our judgment wrong. In a matter of plain common sense, there ain't a cat living as couldn't take the lee side of a dog and fly round him. Now, have you ever noticed a dog at the end of a chain, trying to kill a cat as is sitting was.h.i.+ng her face three-quarters of an inch out of his reach? Of course you have. Well, who's got the sense out of those two? The cat knows that it ain't in the nature of steel chains to stretch. The dog, who ought, you'd think, to know a durned sight more about 'em than she does, is sure they will if you only bark loud enough.

”'Then again, have you ever been made mad by cats screeching in the night, and jumped out of bed and opened the window and yelled at them?

Did they ever budge an inch for that, though you shrieked loud enough to skeer the dead, and waved your arms about like a man in a play? Not they. They've turned and looked at you, that's all. ”Yell away, old man,” they've said, ”we like to hear you: the more the merrier.” Then what have you done? Why, you've s.n.a.t.c.hed up a hair-brush, or a boot, or a candlestick, and made as if you'd throw it at them. They've seen your att.i.tude, they've seen the thing in your hand, but they ain't moved a point. They knew as you weren't going to chuck valuable property out of window with the chance of getting it lost or spoiled. They've got sense themselves, and they give you credit for having some. If you don't believe that's the reason, you try showing them a lump of coal, or half a brick, next time--something as they know you _will_ throw. Before you're ready to heave it, there won't be a cat within aim.

”'Then as to judgment and knowledge of the world, why dogs are babies to 'em. Have you ever tried telling a yarn before a cat, sir?'

”I replied that cats had often been present during anecdotal recitals of mine, but that, hitherto, I had paid no particular attention to their demeanour.

”'Ah, well, you take an opportunity of doing so one day, sir,' answered the old fellow; 'it's worth the experiment. If you're telling a story before a cat, and she don't get uneasy during any part of the narrative, you can reckon you've got hold of a thing as it will be safe for you to tell to the Lord Chief Justice of England.

”'I've got a messmate,' he continued; 'William Cooley is his name. We call him Truthful Billy. He's as good a seaman as ever trod quarter-deck; but when he gets spinning yarns he ain't the sort of man as I could advise you to rely upon. Well, Billy, he's got a dog, and I've seen him sit and tell yarns before that dog that would make a cat squirm out of its skin, and that dog's taken 'em in and believed 'em. One night, up at his old woman's, Bill told us a yarn by the side of which salt junk two voyages old would pa.s.s for spring chicken. I watched the dog, to see how he would take it. He listened to it from beginning to end with c.o.c.ked ears, and never so much as blinked. Every now and then he would look round with an expression of astonishment or delight that seemed to say: ”Wonderful, isn't it!” ”Dear me, just think of it!” ”Did you ever!” ”Well, if that don't beat everything!” He was a chuckle-headed dog; you could have told him anything.

”'It irritated me that Bill should have such an animal about him to encourage him, and when he had finished I said to him, ”I wish you'd tell that yarn round at my quarters one evening.”

”'Why?' said Bill.

”'Oh, it's just a fancy of mine,' I says. I didn't tell him I was wanting my old cat to hear it.

”'Oh, all right,' says Bill, 'you remind me.' He loved yarning, Billy did.