"Why, what do you mean?" asked Crane.
"She is very timid, sir, very easily affected by criticism—"
"Good heavens, I don't want to criticize her!" cried Crane. "I only want to tell her how highly I think of her."
"In my opinion, Burton," Tucker began, when an incident occurred that entirely changed the situation.
A very large elderly gray cat walked into the room, with the step of one who has always been welcome, and approaching Tucker's chair as if it were a familiar place, he jumped suddenly upon his knee and began to purr in his face.
Tucker, under the most favorable circumstances, was not at his best in the early morning. Later in the day he might have borne such an occurrence with more calm, but before ten o'clock he was like a man without armor against such attacks. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation, and drove the cat ahead of him from the room, returning alone an instant later.
"It is outrageous," he said, when he returned, "that our lives are to be rendered miserable by that filthy beast."
"Sit down, Tuck," said Burton, who was talking about wines with the butler. "My life is not rendered in the least miserable. The champagne, Smithfield, ought to go on the ice—"
Tucker, however, could not distract his mind so quickly from the thought of the outrage to which he had just been subjected.
"I must really ask you, Burton," he said, "before you go on with your orders, to insist that that animal be drowned, or at least sent out of the house—"