"When I turn my back I 'll carry him with me," Anthony answered. But in his soul he said: "What 's the good of telling her that that will only be to defer the evil moment? Of course he has marked the tree. He will come back to it at his leisure."
"I beg your pardon," said Susanna. "That will merely be to put the evil off. The cat certainly knows the tree. Directly he 's at liberty, he will come back."
"Oh—?" faltered Anthony, a trifle disconcerted. "Oh? Do—do you think so?"
"Yes," she said. "There 's not a doubt of it. But I am acquainted with a discipline, which, if I have your sanction to apply it, will unnerve Monsieur Patapouf, so far as this particular tree is concerned, until the end of time. Cats have a very high sense of their personal freedom—they hate to be tied up. Well, if we tie Monsieur Patapouf to this tree, so that he can't get away, and leave him alone here for an hour or two, he will conceive such a distaste for everything connected with this tree that he will never voluntarily come within speaking distance of it again."
"Really? That seems very ingenious," commented Anthony.
"'T is an old wives' remedy," said Susanna. "You don't happen to have such a thing as a piece of string in your pocket? It does n't matter. But you have a penknife? Thank you. Now please catch your cat."
Anthony called Patapouf, exerting those blandishments one must exert who would coax a hesitating cat.
Patapouf, by a series of étapes and délours, approached, and was secured.
Susanna, meanwhile, having laid her rosary and prayer-book on the grass, unbuttoned her blue flannel jacket, and removed from round her waist, where it was doing duty as a belt, a broad band of cherry-coloured ribbon. This, with Anthony's penknife, she slitted and ripped several times lengthwise, till she had obtained a yard or two of practicable tether.
"Now, first, we must make him a collar," she said, measuring off what she deemed ribbon sufficient for that purpose.