Fly was frightened. Her godmother seemed to have changed into another person. She looked at Fly with burning eyes.
"Wicked, wicked, cruel child!"
"I couldn't help it," Fly stammered. "I done it by accident." Had she all unconsciously done some awful thing? Surely everybody killed cats. They were like rats—a plague to be exterminated.
"What was it like?" demanded her godmother.
"The nastiest-lukin' baste I iver set eyes on," said Fly earnestly.
"If it had been Phoebus I think I should have killed you," said Miss Black.
Fly looked at her in a bewildered way.
"You are quite sure it wasn't Phoebus—not my darling cat?" said her godmother sternly.
A horrid fear seized Fly. Phoebus was not a boy, he was a cat—surely, surely not that yellow cat—such a thing would be too terrible.
"Was it a large, dignified creature with yellow fur?" her godmother questioned.