She quite grew out of them. But, alas! our thistledown Princess, our dear pretty silver lady! We have delayed to write her sad fate into the pages of the chronicle of the happy Fur Family. She was stolen! We often lie awake thinking of her. Pampered as she was; so accustomed to be thought of, and cherished, and made much of; to have her pearly robe brushed and combed to the last point of perfection, her dainty appetite catered for; to find a caress and a cuddle whenever she was in the mood for it! A lurid mystery ‹accompanied by a great deal of hard swearing› envelops her loss. She was lost on a half-hour’s motor-trip which her family, struck with momentary idiocy, was allowing her to undertake alone. She was, in fact, about to contract another matrimonial alliance with a prince of her own race, and was so securely packed in her luxurious travelling basket, so unmistakably labelled, so solemnly handed over to the care of the conductor of the motor ’bus, that it did not seem as if she could come to harm.
But Blue Persians, as well as pink pearls, are over-precious chattels to confide to a dishonest world! The conductor of the next ’bus to that by which she was expected, handed an empty basket to the envoy from the other side; and when this was refused, declared the cat had escaped on the way. As the basket was hermetically closed, this lie had not even the merit of being plausible. But puzzle succeeded puzzle when the waiter from the Golf Club House, a reliable witness, deposed having picked up the same basket still securely fastened at every corner—but minus the cat—on the first round of the ’bus. “It could have gone to Siberia in that basket,” he declared, “it was that strong and solid!”
The local police, a most intelligent and valuable body of men, declared that nothing could be done, “as no man could be taken up for telling a lie.” And the railway company, after punching a large hole in the basket, announced that as the cat was not insured, we might sue them for five shillings! We advertised and beat the countryside in vain—Kitty-Wee has gone out of our lives. If we only knew that she was happy, the ache at our hearts would be less.
We must fill the gap, and are deliberating whether a pair of Blue Persians, or an orange couple, would afford us the greater joy. We think to decide on the latter would be less callous to the memory of Kitty-Wee, and provide perhaps a better match in the little Villino that runs so much to orange and yellow.
Never could there be anything more beautiful than the St. John’s Wort along the moorland roads. It has been a day of golden heat, the distant woods have shimmering purple vapours in their hollows, and the hills are misty blue. There had been a fire last year in a great flat stretch of pinewood that runs into heather and moor, high above where the road begins to fall into the first of the little country towns between us and London. The wood had been cleared of the dead trees and we suppose it is this which has given encouragement to the great yellow weed. However it may be, it is a field of cloth of gold now. Pines rise up at intervals in their dark solemnity. Royal purple of the heather runs into the gold. It is a meeting of colour that ought to be immortalized.
XXVII
