Burton threw himself back in his chair.
"Willoughby!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly delightful. Now, you must own, Tuck, prejudiced as you are, that that's the best cat name you ever heard in your life."
But Tucker would not or could not respond to this overture, and so Crane looked back at Jane-Ellen, who looked at him and said:
"Oh, do you like that name? I'm so glad, sir." And at this they smiled at each other.
"Don't you think you had better go back to the kitchen, Jane-Ellen?" said the butler sternly.
In the meantime, Tucker had lighted a cigar and had slightly recovered his equanimity.
"As a matter of fact," he now said, in a deep, growling voice, "I did not kick the creature at all—though, if I had, I should have considered myself fully justified. I merely assisted its progress down the kitchen stairs with a sort of push with my foot."
"It was a kick to Willoughby," said the cook, in spite of a quick effort on Smithfield's part to keep her quiet.
"O Tuck!" cried Crane, "it takes a lawyer, doesn't it, to distinguish between a kick and an assisting push with the foot. Well, Jane-Ellen," he went on, turning to her, "I think it's not too much to ask that Willoughby be kept in the kitchen hereafter."
"I'm sure he has no wish to go where he's not wanted," she replied proudly, and at this instant Willoughby entered exactly as before. All four watched him in a sort of hypnotic inactivity. As before, he walked with a slow, firm step to the chair in which Tucker sat, and, as before, jumped upon his knee. But this time Tucker did not move. He only looked at Willoughby and sneered.