‘And they lead secret little lives somewhere else, and only let us see what they want us to see. I knew you understood really.’ She said it with an elfin smile that was certainly borrowed from moonlight on a mountain stream. With one fell swoop it caught him away into a world where age simply did not exist. His mind wavered deliciously. The singing in his heart was almost loud enough to be audible.
But he just saved himself. With a sudden movement he leaned forward and buried his face in the pie of kittens that nestled in her arms, letting them lose their paws for a moment in his beard. The kittens might understand, but at least they could not betray him by putting it into words. It was a narrower escape than he cared for.
‘And these are the Chow puppies,’ cried Jonah, breathless from a long chase after the sable muffs.
‘We call them China and Japan.’
Paul welcomed the diversion. Their teeth were not nearly so sharp as the kittens’, and they burrowed with their black noses into his sleeves. So thick was their fur that they seemed to have no bones at all; their dark eyes literally dripped laughter.
With an effort he put on a more sedate manner.
‘You have got a lot of beasts,’ he said.
‘Animals,’ Nixie corrected him. ‘Only toads, rats, and hedgehogs are beasts. And, remember, if you’re rude to an animal, as Mademoiselle Fleury was once, it only ’spises you—and then——’
‘I beg their pardon,’ he put in hurriedly; ‘I quite understand, of course.’
‘You see it’s rather important, as they want to like you, and unless you respect them they can’t, can they?’ she finished earnestly.