I was mistaken in thinking I was the only human being astir in that enchanted garden. As I lifted a great branch of snowballs that, heavy with its own beauty, had fallen across the path, I saw that Miss Arabella was before me. She was seated in the summer house. The great gray cat was on the ground in front of her, looking up into her face with a sly expression in his round, yellow eyes.
"Now, Grimalkin, I give you fair warning. If you dare so much as look at one of these birds I will shut you up in the house for the rest of the day! You hear me, sir?"
"Me-i-ou——!" and he tried to slink off, deceit in every curve of his handsome body.
"No, you don't, sir!" and with astonishing agility for an old lady who had swallowed a hereditary poker, she swooped forward and caught the cat up into her lap. How different this was from the Miss Arabella of the evening before! Her soft gray hair, with a glint of gold in it, was all loosened about her face. There was a little flush on her cheeks, and instead of the sombre black dress she now wore a loose lavender wrapper. If it had been possible to back out and get up the garden path without being seen, I would have done it. I felt like Peeping Tom and Lady Godiva. Somehow this was Miss Arabella's naked soul I had come on, and I was afraid she would be terribly cut up. There was nothing for me, however, but to speak. I made a little scratching on the path with my toe and shook the snowball branch. She looked up, startled, and loosened her hold on Grimalkin, who immediately took advantage of her and sprang from her lap. This was no time for dignity! The cat at liberty in the garden meant havoc for the nesting birds.
"I'll catch him!" I cried, and then such a chase ensued! Grimalkin thought all the world moved as slowly as the dear ladies who had raised him, and at first scorned me as a pursuer, but I soon gave him to understand that a country girl with gym training added to her natural agility is a match for a fat old tomcat. I cornered him just as he started up the high wall, and, catching him by the back of his neck, in the proper place for a cat to be held, I carried him back to his smiling mistress, who, all unmindful of his unsheathed claws, caught him to her bosom, where he soon dropped asleep, purring away as though that was where he meant to go all the time.
"You are very kind! I am exceedingly grateful to you!"
"Oh, not at all! It was my fault the cat got away. I thought I was all alone in the garden and did not mean to come on you this way. I fancied the birds and I were the only creatures awake."
"I always come down in the garden very early in the morning. I can't trust Grimalkin alone out here while the birds are nesting. After they have hatched and the little ones can fly they can escape from him, he is so fat, but I am always afraid he will drive the mocking-birds away. I can't sleep in the early morning, anyhow. Do you usually arise so early?"
"Not always, but I am a country girl, and country people always get up earlier than city people. My friends, the Tuckers, have to be dragged out of bed unless there is some especial reason for getting up, and then they are energetic enough. I did not disturb them this morning as they were sleeping so peacefully."
Miss Arabella had made a place for me on the stone bench, and was still smiling at me in a very encouraging way. Perhaps she was as eager to find out things about me as I was about her.