“For my part,” declares the Kitten, “my eyes were so dazzled by her dress and her diamonds, and so alarmed by some feathers that grew out of her head, in a manner which I had never witnessed before, but in my old master’s cockatoo at the Castle (and she never wore hers so high), that it was some minutes before I could recover myself.”
The episode of a mock-christening, which recalls the Juvenile Tatler, serves to change the scene. Felissa, provoked to scratch, is sent down in disgrace to a country Rectory, where she enjoys a quiet interval; but before long, the Bad Nephew gets the better of the Good Midshipman, and the kitten runs away.
She now seeks a refuge in the house of “the most charitable woman living”, where, taking up her old part of unconscious critic, she discovers that charity may be a mere cloak for display; and coming thence to another house, ventures into the library of a Man of Sentiment whose portrait would have pleased Rousseau’s enemies.
“I crept behind a huge folio to recover my fright and, as usual, set about rendering my person neat and attractive, in expectation of soon becoming visible. My new master, it was evident, could never have been instructed on this subject; for as I peeped at him from behind my folio, I thought that he was the dirtiest and most disagreeable man I had ever seen in my life; and wished from my heart, that my nice clean father and mother had had the education of him. He was short and thick, and by no means pretty; of an ill complexion, and his face very far from clean; all his skins, likewise, were of a bad colour, both his shirt skin and his outer-skin, which seemed much out of repair....”
She is irresistible, this Felissa: reassured to find the sentimentalist writing an Ode to Mercy; listening “with her ears pricked up, as if she had been watching for a mouse,” while he reads it to his daughter; puzzled by the extraordinary fact that “the more she appeared distressed, the more pleased her father seemed to be.” It is even more unaccountable that a young lady of so much sensibility should turn a starved kitten out of doors. “But kittens are easily puzzled”, and Felissa runs into fresh adventures on her way to a happy ending.
Her fortune is almost too modest for a descendant of Puss in Boots: no more than the blessings of an Establishment and many friends; but the chief of these is the daughter of an officer “who lost his invaluable life in the memorable battle which deprived our country of the gallant and lamented Nelson.”
She, of course, marries the promoted Midshipman, and the Kitten, having attained a certain seniority, and finding little scope for her sly wit, devotes herself to the instruction and amusement of little Felissae. If a story could end better, let the Wyse Chylde show how.
Adventures of things, a variation of the same idea, were mostly derived from Charles Johnstone’s novel, Chrysal; or, the Adventures of a Guinea.[120]