‘Her name,’ whispered Nixie.
‘We call her Mrs. Tompkyns, because it’s old now,’ Toby explained, ignoring genders.
‘After the head-gardener’s gra’mother,’ Nixie explained hastily in his ear; ‘but we might change it to Uncle Paul in honour of you now, mightn’t we?’
‘Mrs. Uncle Paul,’ corrected Jonah, looking on with slight disapproval, and anxious to get to the white mice and the squirrel.
‘It would be a pity to change the name, I think,’ Paul said, straightening himself up dizzily from the introduction, and watching the splendid creature fall upon its head from Toby’s weakening grasp, and then march away with unperturbed dignity to its former throne upon the window-sill. ‘I feel rather afraid of Mrs. Tompkyns,’ he added; ‘she’s so very majestic.’
‘Oh, you needn’t be,’ they cried in chorus. ‘It’s all put on, you know, that sort of grand manner. We knew her when she was a kitten.’
The object-lesson was not lost upon him. Of all creatures in the world, he reflected as he watched her, cats have the truest dignity. They absolutely refuse to be laughed at. No cat would ever betray its real self, yet here was he, a grown-up, intelligent man, vacillating, and on the verge already of hopeless capitulation.
‘And what’s the name of these persons?’ he asked quickly, turning for safety to Nixie, who had her arms full of a writhing heap she had been diligently collecting from the corners of the room.
‘Oh, that’s only Mrs. Tompkyns’ family,’ exclaimed Jonah impatiently; ‘the last family, I mean. She’s had lots of others.’
‘The last family before this was only two,’ Nixie told him. ‘We called them Ping and Pong. They live in the stables now. But these we call Pouf, Sambo, Spritey, Zezette, and Dumps——’