“Dear Uncle Seward,” she said. “I can’t say anything—except that—I don’t know how it is—there seems to have come something since I met you—since I heard from you. Why, you bring back my dear old father to me at every turn. You are so like him. You have the same expressions—everything. And yet—you were not even brothers.”
“Cousins, though. Nearly the same thing. Kiss me, child. You haven’t yet. You know—all the public squash on the station platform.”
She did, and in the act it seemed as if her dead father—dead under the impression that he could serve her interests best by so dying—were alive and speaking within this room. Even in the quiet, contained voice, she seemed to recognise his.
It may have been imagination, but Mervyn seemed to think she could not withdraw her attention from the old nail-studded, shaded door in the corner. She kept looking at it even while they were talking. He remembered his vigil on the night of the rescue. Heavens! was this beastly, deluding mesmeristic effect going to hold her too, now at the first few minutes of her arrival? Then a diversion occurred. A cry from Melian suddenly drew his attention.
“What’s this? Oh you little sweet. Here come to me, little pooge-pooge!”
The little black kitten had suddenly landed itself, without notice, upon the white tablecloth, where it squatted, purring.
“Oh, you sweet little woolly ball—where did you come from?” cried Melian, picking up the tiny creature and stuffing it into the hollow of her cheek and neck. “Uncle Seward, did you get this on purpose for me? Tell me.”
Her cheeks were pink with animation, and her blue eyes shone.
“No, dear. That’s a special child of my own, since it’s little life began. It is with me always. I’m glad you’ve taken to it.”
“Taken to it? I should think so. Now you’re going to be jealous, Uncle Seward. I’m going to appropriate it. Oh, what a sweet little beast!” holding it up under the armpits. But the kitten growled expostulatingly.