"It's too late to tell him now. We saw him go off in the car." Miss Thorley did not explain that that was the reason she was willing to call on George Washington. "I shall be very busy after today, Mary Rose. I might not be able to come again for several weeks."
"Is that so?" Mary Rose looked less doubtful. "Perhaps I can explain that to Mr. Jerry." She led the way into Mr. Jerry's spacious yard. "I expect George Washington's inside," she said when they failed to find him outside.
"Run in and bring him out," suggested Miss Thorley, sitting down in one of the wicker chairs that were under the big apple tree that had lived there ever since Waloo had been some man's farm.
Mary Rose disappeared but before Miss Thorley had looked half over the yard she was back. "He's asleep," she said in a loud whisper. "Do come in and see him. He looks perfectly beautiful with a fern at his head and a bunch of asters at his feet. Please, come." She took Miss Thorley's hand and tried to pull her to her feet.
Miss Thorley did not wish to go into the house. She had had no intention of doing more than to slip into the yard for a moment. Now that she was there she felt uncomfortably conscious. But Mr. Jerry was away, she had seen him go with her own eyes. It would be interesting to see his home. Or perhaps the picture Mary Rose had described, a sleeping cat with a fern at his head and asters at his feet, was alluring. Whichever it was she allowed Mary Rose to lead her in at the side door, through the dining-room that seemed far too large for only Mr. Jerry and his Aunt Mary, into the big living-room that had begun life as a front and back parlor. There on the wide window seat was the self-supporting cat, George Washington himself, with a fern spreading its feathery fronds above his head and a cluster of red asters in a brass bowl at his tall. George Washington had calculated the amount of space between the jardinière and the bowl to a nicety. There was not the fraction of an inch to spare.
"There on the wide window seat was the self-supporting cat."
"There!" Mary Rose pointed a proud finger as she stopped before the window.
"He is a beauty," Miss Thorley was honest enough to say. Her sense of color was delighted at the play of sunshine on George Washington's gray overcoat which had caught a warm glow from the red asters. "Wake him up, Mary Rose. You really can't see a cat asleep any more than you can a baby."