The sunshine came slanting between the cedars and lay in shining strips on the grass. Everything glistened with dew. The air was sweet and fresh as it only is in the early hours after the dawn. Very faintly, as though its mind was not yet made up, the air stirred among the bushes.
Paul’s first impulse was to waken the entire household so that they might share with him this first glory of the morning. ‘Probably they don’t know how splendid it is!’ The thought of the sleeping family, many of them perhaps with closed windows, missing all the wonder, was a positive pain to him. But, fortunately for himself, he decided it might be better not to begin his visit in this way.
‘I guess you and I, Mrs. Tompkyns, are the only people about,’ he said, looking down at the beautiful grey creature that sniffed the air calmly at his feet. ‘Come on, then. Let’s make a raid together on the woods!’
He threw a disdainful glance at the sleeping house; no smoke came from the chimneys; most of the upper windows were closed. A delicious fragrance stole out of the woods to meet him as he strolled across the wet lawn. He felt like a schoolboy doing something out of bounds.
‘You lead and I follow,’ he said, addressing his companion in mischief.
And at once his attention became absorbed in the animal’s characteristic behaviour. Obviously it was delighted to be with him; yet it did not wish him to think so, or, if he did think so, to give any sign of the fact. Nothing could have been plainer. First it crept along by the stone wall delicately, with its body very close to the ground as though the weight of the atmosphere oppressed it; and when he spoke, it turned its head with an affectation of genuine surprise as though it would say, ‘You here! I thought I was alone.’ Then it sat down on the gravel path and began to wash its face and paws till he had passed, after which—when he was not looking, of course—it followed him condescendingly, sniffing at blades of grass en route without actually touching them, and flicking its tail upwards with sudden, electric jerks.
Paul understood in a general way what was expected of him. He watched it surreptitiously, pretending to examine the flowers. For this, he knew, was the great Cat Game of elaborate pretence. And Mrs. Tompkyns, true adept in the art, played up wonderfully, and incidentally taught him much about the ways and methods of simple disguise; it advanced stealthily when he wasn’t looking; it stopped to wash, or gaze into the air, the moment he turned. It was very shy, and very affected, and very self-conscious. Inimitable was the way it kept to all the little rules of the game. It walked daintily down the path after him, shaking the dew from its paws with a rapid, quivering motion. Then, suddenly arching its back as though momentarily offended—at nothing—it stared up at him with an expression that seemed to question his very existence. ‘I guess I ought to fade away when you look at me like that!’ was his thought.
‘I’m here. I’m coming, Mrs. Tompkyns,’ he felt constrained to remark aloud before going forward again. ‘The grand morning excites my blood just as much as it excites your own.’
It seemed necessary to assert his presence. No intelligent person can be conceited long in the presence of a cat. No living creature can so sublimely ‘ignore.’ But Paul was not conceited. He continued to watch it with delight.
One very important rule of the game appeared to be that plenty of bushes were necessary by way of cover, so that it could pretend it was not really coming farther than the particular bush where it was hiding at the moment. Instinctively, he never made the grave mistake of calling it to follow; and though it never trotted alongside, being always either behind or in front of him, the presence of the cat in his immediate neighbourhood provided all sorts of company imaginable. It had also provided him with an opportunity to play the hero.