‘Fie, Meriamoun!’ said the Earl, as the puss resumed her Egyptian pose beside him. ‘Shall I send the animal out of the room? I know some people cannot endure a cat,’ and he mentioned the gallant Field Marshal who is commonly supposed to share this infirmity.
‘By no means, my lord,’ said the Jesuit, who looked strangely pale. ‘Cats have an extraordinary instinct for caressing people who happen to be born with exactly the opposite instinct. I am like the man in Aristotle who was afraid of the cat.’
‘I wish we knew more about that man,’ said Miss Willoughby, who was stroking Meriamoun. ‘Are you afraid of cats, Lord Scremerston?—but you, I suppose, are afraid of nothing.’
‘I am terribly afraid of all manner of flying things that buzz and bite,’ said Scremerston.
‘Except bullets,’ said Miss Willoughby—Beauty rewarding Valour with a smile and a glance so dazzling that the good little Yeoman blushed with pleasure.
‘It is a shame!’ thought Logan. ‘I don’t like it now I see it.’
‘As to horror of cats,’ said the Earl, ‘I suppose evolution can explain it. I wonder how they would work it out in Science Jottings. There is a great deal of electricity in a cat.’
‘Evolution can explain everything,’ said the Jesuit demurely, ‘but who can explain evolution?’
‘As to electricity in the cat,’ said Logan, ‘I daresay there is as much in the dog, only everybody has tried stroking a cat in the dark to see the sparks fly, and who ever tried stroking a dog in the dark, for experimental purposes?—did you, Lady Mary?’
Lady Mary never had tried, but the idea was new to her, and she would make the experiment in winter.