“Oh, Daddy, it’s so cold outside, and it hasn’t done anybody any harm, and it won’t have any Christmas, and perhaps it’s one of the ‘grateful beasts’ in the carol,” sobbed Philomène.
“It certainly seemed grateful enough for the milk,” said Nurse, who had not listened to the waits, and was of a literal turn of mind, “but I don’t much fancy a stray cat in the kitchen all the same.”
The doctor sat down in the red-cushioned rocking-chair, and took his child on his knee. He was a tall, well-made man with dark hair, keen eyes, and a somewhat abrupt manner, but he was never anything but gentle with his little daughter, and Philomène’s sobs subsided as he stroked her hair and patted her cheek.
“Look here, little Miss Muffet,” he said, “I will tell you what we will do. We will ask Nurse to let us keep the pussy over-night, and later on we will advertise in the newspaper, just as we did for Master Mustardseed, and if it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone or to come from anywhere in particular, you shall have it for your own, and Nurse won’t mind it if it catches the mice in the scullery, will she?”
Philomène’s face cleared, and she looked beseechingly at Nurse. “You are master in this house, sir,” admitted Nurse, “and it seems useless to fight against this love of dumb things. Cats especially do seem to run in families.”
So the white kitten stayed, and grew into a white cat, glossy and well-liking, that followed Philomène about the house “like a dog,” said the people who had never taken the trouble to befriend a cat.
CHAPTER II
WHICH INTRODUCES THE HEROINE’S GODMOTHER
If Philomène had not actually a fairy godmother, she had at least the nearest possible approach to one. To begin with, Godmother was beautiful. She had the red hair that artists love, a wild-rose complexion, and a gentle, even voice, which never scolded and never sneered; she had cool white hands with twinkling rings, and her dresses made a stately silken frou-frou on the stairs, bringing with them a faint fragrance of lavender and old-world pot-pourri.
She had a dear little country house called the Cushats, which stood among pinewoods where pigeons cooed to each other all day long, and the sea was not far off. Here the summer holidays were spent by Philomène, “little cushat” as Godmother called her at times, for, as the Danish proverb says, “a dear child has many names.” She would sit by the hour in the oak-panelled drawing-room, strumming on the quaint old spinet, or in the window-seat reading, while the bees murmured perpetually in the blossoming lime-tree outside. The garden was full of what are usually called old-fashioned flowers, though for my own part I should be slow to connect anything quite so tiresome as fashion, with anything quite so sweet as flowers. There the snowdrops came at Candlemas, and the daffodils on Lady Day, and there was a whole big hedge of the rosemary that Shakespeare loved.
Besides the Cushats, Godmother had a house in London, where there were broad flights of stairs with shallow steps, and vistas of reception rooms with polished floors and beautiful pictures and cabinets filled with eastern curios. Godmother’s own boudoir was a remote hushed corner, where in midwinter forced lilac drugged the air with subtle sweetness.