‘Mr Lessingham’s cat?’
‘Then it almost murdered Percy Woodville.’
‘Mr Atherton!—I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’
‘It’s a fact. It was a question of a little matter in a wrong place, and, if it hadn’t been for something very like a miracle, he’d be dead.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t have anything to do with such things—I hate them.’
I stared.
‘Hate them?—I thought you’d come to see an illustration.’
‘And pray what was your notion of an illustration?’
‘Well, another cat would have had to be killed, at least.’
‘And do you suppose that I would have sat still while a cat was being killed for my—edification?’