Phil's artist nature grasped her standpoint in a flash. The granite face, with its signs of suffering, the loneliness, the poverty, all appealed to him to excuse her disappointment.
His eyes swept about the bare walls.
"Where are Aunt Mary's pictures?" he asked. "Was she too modest to hang them?"
"There were some up there," replied Eliza. "I took 'em down."
The visitor's quick eyes noted the white boards on the mantelpiece. With an unexpected movement, he strode across to it, and turned them around.
He stood in the same position for a space.
"Great guns, but she hates me!" he thought, while Eliza, startled, felt the shamed color stream up to her temples.
"What would Mrs. Ballard say!" was her guilty reflection.
Pluto here relieved the situation by making a majestic entrance. His jewel eyes fixed on the stranger for a moment with blinking indifference, then he proceeded, with measured tread, toward the haven of his mistress's lap.
"Hello, Katze," said Phil, stooping his scarlet face. He seized the creature by the nape of its neck and instantly the amazed cat was swung up to his broad shoulder, where it sat, claws digging into his coat and eyes glowering into his own.