But perhaps she was checked by a look on Mr. Earnest's face. He was not laughing now; neither was he scowling; he looked very grave.
“Jennie,” he said, “come here, dear,” and with a quick, unaccustomed flutter of her heart she went to him. “I've been a brute—a cowardly brute, but I'm sorry, and I want to do better. Will you forgive me? And if I behave like a man in future do you think you can go back to the old love, dear?”
The children had run out to see if Nannie had left them, and the room was very still; no sound but the ticking of the clock, and once in awhile a deep sob that would not be crushed back.
Great events turn on small pivots ofttimes, and so it happened that there were some changes in that little house after this.
Curiously enough, not long after Nannie's story a great tortoise-shell tomcat appeared in the Earnest home. No one thought of asking Mrs. Earnest if she had brought him there, and the others knew nothing about him. More curiously still, when Mr. Earnest began to grow sulky or ugly, Sir Tortoise Shell would often walk into the room and glare at him with his big, ugly eyes.
“Jennie, I believe I'll shoot that cat!” he exclaimed one day. “I can't bear him!”
“Oh, no, I couldn't let you hurt him, Gerald,” said Mrs. Earnest, who had become quite a spirited little woman in the new and happy atmosphere she breathed now. “I'm so fond of him.”
She looked demure enough as she stooped to pet the cat, but really her eyes were sparkling with mischief, for truth to tell, she had heard Nannie's story and was ready to adopt a big yellow cat as her coat of arms.
Mr. Earnest strolled out on to the gallery. He too was thinking of that story.
“I could have stood the trouncing,” he said to himself, “and the hanging, and even the drawing and quartering; but when it came to sending all four quarters to the penitentiary for life, what could a poor devil do but cave in?”