“Are you a bully, Mino?” Birkin asked.
The young slim cat looked at him, and slowly narrowed its eyes. Then it glanced away at the landscape, looking into the distance as if completely oblivious of the two human beings.
“Mino,” said Ursula, “I don’t like you. You are a bully like all males.”
“No,” said Birkin, “he is justified. He is not a bully. He is only insisting to the poor stray that she shall acknowledge him as a sort of fate, her own fate: because you can see she is fluffy and promiscuous as the wind. I am with him entirely. He wants superfine stability.”
“Yes, I know!” cried Ursula. “He wants his own way—I know what your fine words work down to—bossiness, I call it, bossiness.”
The young cat again glanced at Birkin in disdain of the noisy woman.
“I quite agree with you, Miciotto,” said Birkin to the cat. “Keep your male dignity, and your higher understanding.”
Again the Mino narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at the sun. Then, suddenly affecting to have no connection at all with the two people, he went trotting off, with assumed spontaneity and gaiety, his tail erect, his white feet blithe.
“Now he will find the belle sauvage once more, and entertain her with his superior wisdom,” laughed Birkin.
Ursula looked at the man who stood in the garden with his hair blowing and his eyes smiling ironically, and she cried: