"Well, we got chatting, the way people do, and I found out that the cat lived at a farmer's house about a quarter of a mile down the Oxenthorpe Road. Then I walked part of the way home with her, still chatting, and I found that she was a very agreeable individual. I told her about the rats in the stable and the difficulty I had in making them behave, because the Doctor wouldn't allow any one to kill them. And she said, if I wished, she'd sleep in the stable a few nights and the rats would probably leave as soon as they smelled her around.
"This she did, and the results were excellent. The rats departed in a body and the old horse's corn-bin was left undisturbed. Then she disappeared and for several nights I saw nothing of her. So one evening I thought it would be only decent of me to call at her farm down the Oxenthorpe Road, to thank her.
"I went to her farm and found her in the farm-yard. I thanked her for what she had done and asked her why she hadn't been around to my place of late.
"'I've just had kittens,' she said. 'Six—and I haven't been able to leave them a moment. They are in the farmer's parlor now. Come in and I'll show them to you.'
"So in we went. And on the parlor floor, in a round basket, there were six of the prettiest kittens you ever saw. While we were looking at them we heard the farmer and his wife coming downstairs. So, thinking they might not like to have a duck in the parlor (some folks are so snobbish and pernickety, you know—not like the Doctor), I hid myself behind a closet door just as the farmer and his wife came into the room.
"They leaned over the basket of kittens, stroked the white cat and started talking. Now, the cat didn't understand what they said, of course. But I, being round the Doctor so much and discussing with him the differences between duck grammar and people's grammar, understood every word they uttered.
"And this is what I heard the farmer say to his wife: 'We'll keep the black and white kitten, Liza. I'll drown the other five to-morrow morning. Won't never do to have all them cats running around the place.' His grammar was atrocious.
