She looked at him with soft eyes.
"When the sun shines some women only want to let it warm them through and through."
"Well, what's the favor?"
She pointed at the basket containing Mrs. Slightly and her offspring, which Woolf had not noticed.
"You asked me to have them drowned. I'd rather find homes for them. Please, D.D.?"
"But, good Lord—why?"
She drew away from him, walked over to the basket, and leant over it, as if communing with Mrs. Slightly.
"I had a dream last night," she said. "It's because of that I—I want Mrs. Slightly's kittens to live. I dreamt that I was a mother cat, only in my dream I had but one little kitty. But it was all mine and I loved it. It had soft black hair with a white tuft in it—like its father." She looked straight at the white lock that was so singular a feature of Woolf's dark hair. "And one afternoon when I had come back from a stroll I went to the basket to find that my Kitty was gone. I mewed for it everywhere. There was nowhere that I did not look. I couldn't possibly, as a cat, know that the human I looked up to, the giver of food and all good things could do anything so evil as to make away with the precious thing. It was a nightmare. In my dream, I was searching, searching for hours. My cat-heart was breaking. When I woke up, I was mewing! Don't laugh, Fred. And I made up my mind that I couldn't have Mrs. Slightly's kittens drowned. Oh, the people who drown kittens and take away calves from cows and lambs from sheep, must be hard-hearted beasts. Why, if I had a baby, a little soft warm baby, and somebody wanted to deprive me of it—Fred!" She caught at his arm.
Startled by the sharp note of appeal in her voice he put a startled question.
Maggy had cast her arms protectively round the basket where Mrs. Slightly and her kittens slept, all unconscious of issues concerning their fate. Her shoulders were shaking. She was moved by some extraordinary emotion. But when she turned to Woolf again she was calm.