‘I seem to remember it,’ said Merton. ‘Christianos ad Leones’. In fact he had written this humorous article himself. ‘But is there nothing else?’ he asked. ‘Only a temper, so natural to genius disturbed or diverted in the process of composition, and a passion for the felidae, such as has often been remarked in the great. There was Charles Baudelaire, Mahomet—’
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir, and,’ said Mrs. Gisborne, rising, and snapping her reticule, ‘I think I was a fool for answering your advertisement. I did not come here to be laughed at, and I think common politeness—’
‘I beg a thousand pardons,’ said Merton. ‘I am most distressed at my apparent discourtesy. My mind was preoccupied by the circumstances of this very difficult case, and involuntarily glided into literary anecdote on the subject of cats and their owners. They are my passion—cats—and I regret that they inspire you with antipathy.’ Here he picked up Kutuzoff and carried him into the inner room.
‘It is not that I object to any of Heaven’s creatures kept in their place,’ said Mrs. Gisborne somewhat mollified, ‘but you must make allowances, sir, for my anxiety. It sours a mother of nine. Friday is one of his gorging dinner-parties, and who knows what may happen if she pleases him? The kitchen maid says, I mean I hear, that she wears an engaged ring already.’
‘That is very bad,’ said Merton, with sympathy. ‘The dinner is on Friday, you say?’ and he made a note of the date.
‘Yes, 15 Albany Grove, on the Regent’s Canal.’
‘You can think of nothing else—no weakness to work on?’
‘No, sir, just her awful temper; I would save him from it, for he has another as bad. And besides hopes from him have kept me up so long, his only relation, and times are so hard, and schooling and boots, and everything so dear, and we so many in family.’ Tears came into the poor lady’s eyes.
‘I’ll give the case my very best attention,’ he said, shaking hands with the client. To Merton’s horror she tried, Heaven help her, to pass a circular packet, wrapped in paper, into his hand. He evaded it. It
was a first interview, for which no charge was made. ‘What can be done shall be done, though I confess that I do not see my way,’ and he accompanied her downstairs to the street.