Uncle Joe's Stories

by Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne

Now John Gower had a great number of relations; in fact there was and is an old proverb in his native parish, to the effect that "if you know the Gowers, you know all Mersham;" and certainly the knowledge would to this day make you acquainted with a large quantity of people.

They were none of them rich relations, certainly, unless you might have applied that adjective to the wife of a certain Farmer Long who lived a few miles off, and whose husband might certainly be said to be thriving.

Sally Long was a stout, comfortable-looking dame, who could not fairly have found fault if you had called her fat, but who, unlike most fat people, was not gifted with the best of tempers. If all reports were true, she led her husband rather a life of it, and scolded pretty equally all her household. She had no children, and her husband's son by a former wife being a trifle weak in the head, and for that reason generally known by the name of "Simple Steenie," there was no one to dispute her authority in house, yard or farm.

These worthy people lived in the parish of Aldington, and although John Gower was no looker after dead men's shoes, and a man who would have scorned to bow down before any one for the sake of their wealth, he thought it was but right and fair towards his children to encourage them to maintain friendly relations with his distant cousin, Dame Long.

She had noticed the children more than once, when they were quite little things; and when a woman of a certain age, with no children of her own, notices the children of other people, who happen to be her own relations, there is no telling what may come of it. So the boys had orders to take their caps off and the girls to drop a respectful curtsey whenever they passed Mrs. Long, and any little act of civility which they could possibly perform was never forgotten.

Now it happened that someone, many years ago, had given to the Gower family a very particular cat. When I use the word "particular," I do not mean to imply a very strict or fastidious cat, but one that was particular in the sense of being different from the general run of cats, which was certainly true of this individual cat.

She was jet black, which you will say is not at all uncommon; but Farmer Barrett always maintained that no cats that he ever heard of were so jet and so glossy as the Gower cats. She was a magnificent animal: her whiskers unusually long, her tail splendidly bushy, her body beautifully and symmetrically made, and her head, in size, shape, and the intelligence which was displayed upon her face, little short of perfection.

This cat lived until a great age, and nobody exactly knew when or where it died. To tell the truth there was always a legend in the Gower family that it never did die, at least not in their cottage, but that it disappeared on the very day of old Betty Bartlet's death.

I do not know—for Farmer Barrett could not tell me, though I asked him more than once—how they connected the two events, but nevertheless they had this legend, if so I may call it.

But whatever happened to this cat, of one thing there is certainly no doubt, namely, that during her lifetime she several times went through the ceremony of kittening, and that her race seemed by no means likely to be extinct. Her kittens were always black, always very glossy and always remarkably clever and intelligent, and people were always glad to get a kitten of the Gower breed.