“Puss, puss,” Miss Elver shrilly yelled.
“No good,” said Mr. Cardan. “They only understand Italian.”
Miss Elver looked at him. “Perhaps I’d better learn a little, then,” she said. “Cat’s Italian.”
Mrs. Chelifer meanwhile was looking down very earnestly into the forum. “Why, there are at least twenty,” she said. “How do they get there?”
“People who want to get rid of their cats just come and drop them over the railing into the forum,” Mr. Cardan explained.
“And they can’t get out?”
“So it seems.”
An expression of distress appeared on Mrs. Chelifer’s gentle face. She made a little clicking with her tongue against her teeth and sadly shook her head. “Dear, dear,” she said, “dear, dear. And how do they get fed?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Mr. Cardan. “Perhaps they feed on one another. People throw things down from time to time, no doubt.”
“There’s a dead one there, in the middle,” said Mrs. Chelifer; and a note of something like reproach came into her voice, as though she found that Mr. Cardan was to blame for the deadness of the little corpse at the foot of the triumphal column.