Mervyn sprang to his feet.
“What? It has scratched you?” he cried, taking the long white hand and examining it concernedly.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” laughed the girl.
“Nothing or not, we’ll bathe it a bit,” he said, going over to the sideboard, and dashing some water into a tumbler. “Any sort of wound should be bathed at once, just in case there might be something left in it,” and he proceeded to perform that process then and there.
“Oh, it’s all safe,” laughed the girl. “Poor little poogie! I suppose it was scared over something and had to get away at any price. I’m dead cert, it didn’t mean it.”
“No—no,” assented Mervyn. “Cats are extraordinarily ‘nervy’ things. I believe they’ve a sight more imagination than they’re given credit for. It’s quite likely it was aware of something outside to which it had an objection, a stoat perhaps or even a badger. Now a dog would have barked the house down, but there’d have been no scare.”
“Of course. By the way, Uncle Seward, I wonder you don’t keep a dog or two. They are such jolly beasts to have—especially in a place like this.”
“I’ve tried it, and they’ve disappeared. They get into the coverts you know, and then—! I don’t care to keep one always on a chain. It’s beastly rough luck on them.”
He had tried it, and the dogs had disappeared, even as he had said. They had done so, however, on their own initiative. But he did not tell her this.
Yet it struck him that she must instinctively have grasped—or been affected by—something of the “influence” which at times seemed to haunt the place. She, too, now kept looking towards the blind-drawn window, and that not in her natural way. So far he had guarded her from any rumours from outside as to its sinister repute; and, as we have said, had threatened the old couple with the last extremity if they should let go anything. And now, just as he was congratulating himself that she would settle down quite happily and contentedly, comes this untoward mysterious making towards upset. And now, all at once, she had grown quite grave, quite subdued.