“Mimi.”
Harriett softened. She remembered. “When I was a little girl I had a cat called Mimi. White Angora. Very handsome. And your name is——”
“Brailsford. I’m Dorothy.”
Next time, when Mimi jumped on the lupins and broke them down, Dorothy came again and said she was sorry. And she stayed to tea. Harriett revealed herself.
“My father was Hilton Frean.” She had noticed for the last fifteen years that people showed no interest when she told them that. They even stared as though she had said something that had no sense in it. Dorothy said, “How nice.”
“Nice?”
“I mean it must have been nice to have him for your father.... You don’t mind my coming into your garden last thing to catch Mimi?”
Harriett felt a sudden yearning for Dorothy. She saw a pleasure, a happiness, in her coming. She wasn’t going to call, but she sent little notes in to Dorothy asking her to come to tea.
Dorothy declined.
But every evening, towards bedtime, she came into the garden to catch Mimi. Through the window Harriett could hear her calling: “Mimi! Mimi!” She could see her in her white frock, moving about, hovering, ready to pounce as Mimi dashed from the bushes. She thought: “She walks into my garden as if it was her own. But she won’t make a friend of me. She’s young, and I’m old.”