She calmed herself. “Oh, you know how it is when one's been all excited-like and worked up; we all say more than we mean. But that about dry bread! Well, there! I simply can't bear it. It's a wicked, cruel untruth, that's what it is; and besides, you can't be going to eat all the whole of what she's put down for you.” Excitement was coming on again, and she ended with a loud ill-tempered mew.
Well, I gave her what she seemed to want, and shortly after, worn out doubtless with the fatigues of the day, she went to sleep on a chair, not even caring to follow the maid downstairs when things were cleared away.
VI
THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS
I got out my precious casket. I sat by the window and watched. The moon shone out, the lid of the box loosened in due course, and I touched my forehead with the ointment. But neither at once nor for some little time after did I notice any fresh power coming to me.
With the moon, up came also the little town, and no sooner were the doors of the houses level with the grass than the boys were out of them and running in some numbers towards my window; in fact, some slipped out of their own windows, not waiting for the doors to be available. Wag was the first. Slim, more sedate, came among the crowd that followed. These were still the only two who felt no hesitation about talking to me. The others were all fully occupied in exploring the room.
“To-morrow,” I said (after some sort of how-do-you-do's had been exchanged), “you'll be flying all over the place, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Wag, shortly. “But I want to know—I say, Slim, what was it we wanted first?”
“Wasn't there a message from your father?” said Slim.
“Oh, yes, of course. ‘If they're about the house,’ he said, ‘give them horseshoes; if there's a bat-ball, squirt at it’: he thinks there's a squirt in the tool-house—Oh, there's the cat; I must——” After delivering all this in one sentence, he rushed to the edge of the table and took a kind of header into the midst of the unfortunate animal, who, however, only moaned or crowed without waking, and turned partly over on her back.