There was Austral, too, the favourite of her later years,—a gentleman in every sense of the word,—his father and mother both in the Australian stud-book. The father was Oxford, the mother Uproarious, and the colt had been cleverly named Undergraduate. It was S. J.-B. who changed his name: she probably thought it inappropriate to a horse of eight or nine years; and indeed it was a word that for her was too full of associations.
No other animal came anywhere near horses in her estimation. Cats she disliked. In the old student days she had gone to see Miss Pechey at the home of the lady whose children were fortunate enough to have her for their governess. In the course of dinner, a spoiled and cherished family cat leapt gently on to the table, coming between S. J.-B. and the person to whom she was talking. Without stopping to think, S. J.-B. put out her arm and brushed the cat on to the floor.
When, some thirty years later, she was recalling how she had wondered whether so pretty a girl as Miss Pechey could have nerve enough to study medicine, and how she had been informed by one who knew that the pretty girl was “calm as an ox,” Mrs. Pechey Phipson grimly intervened,—“I assure you I was anything but calm when you swept that cat on to the floor!”
S. J.-B. laughed. And her laugh was a thing to hear,—especially when the old jokes and the old stories were recalled,—a hearty musical laugh that brought such wholesome tears to her eyes, and that would not allow her face to set into really tragic lines.
But there is something more to be said about her dislike to cats. After lunch at Bruntsfield Lodge, it was her custom to gather up the bits of bread that were left and take them out to the lawn to feed the birds. She loved to see the creatures flying towards her the moment she appeared, and no cat was ever tolerated in the grounds.
One evening in early summer, when she came in from her work to a high-walled garden all shimmering with promise, a half-grown kitten stood in the way. “Shoo!” said S. J.-B. “Go away! Who allowed that cat to be here?”
Everyone trembled,—except the little intruder. It looked S. J.-B. full in the face, and held its ground.
Of course it was turned out, but a few days later she saw it in the same place, leaping at a moth in the sunshine. And that time nothing was said.
And a few days later still, when she had passed beyond the garden into the house, the kitten walked forward to meet her. This really was too much; but when she protested, the kitten simply looked in her face and smiled.
So it was allowed to remain under due restrictions, until one night S. J.-B. was awakened by a loud sneeze. She struck a light, and there, on the shoulder of the sofa at the foot of her bed, calmly reposing on a big woollen shawl, with its eyes fixed on her in gentle protest against the open window, was the kitten.