My eyes met Martell's for one moment, then I cleared my throat. Slowly and sadly I opened the history of Peter militant, with unacknowledged borrowings from the lives of other Peters with other names. Beginning with cats I had seen in my garden looking as if they felt rather blurred and indistinct, I passed on through cats speechless and perforated, to cats that were. I told sad stories of the deaths of cats. I talked of nights of agonising shrieks, and mornings of guilty eyes and blood-stained lips. My store of reminiscences lasted five minutes, and before Mrs. Martell had recovered from their recitation I pleaded a pressing engagement and took my departure.
You will now understand why I count Martell among my friends and am at this moment, as I said before, smoking one of his cigars. It came in a box of a hundred, with the laconic note, "One for each."
As I write, my dog and my black kitten are barging in perfect accord all round my legs in pursuit of a brand-new collar with "Peter" printed in big letters.
A NEW CRAZE.
"What a tragic face you have, Miss Pootle."
"Yes, You See, I adore misery."
Notice outside a station of the Wirral Railway Co.:—