“Oh! pussy, pussy,” he cried, as he picked me up, “I thought I would never see you more, and I was quite disconsolate. You went out by the back and over the tiles, and now you’ve come in at the front; how did you find your way round?
“It is instinct, instinct, I suppose,” he added. “He who guides the great fur seals back through the stormy seas, through hundreds of miles of darkness and mist to their far northern islands in June, He guided you.
“‘Reason raise o’er instinct if we can,
In this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis man.’”
Well, Warlock, we left Dublin, and at last found ourselves at Waterloo Station.
The train was in, and I was in also. I was in a basket, and I didn’t half like it.
I heard my master say to a railway porter, “Take charge of that basket for a few minutes, porter, till I go and buy some newspapers.”
Five minutes after this, when Edgar returned, he met that railway porter, and he was looking very disconsolate indeed.
His hands were bleeding, and he carried an empty basket.
“Oh! sir,” he cried, “your cat has gone. The basket was not securely fastened, and as soon as you left she wriggled out.”
“But why, man, didn’t you stick to her?” cried master.