After supper, about half-past eight, Auntie May took me in her arms and carried me into a bedroom. A stiff woman was there with a white cap and apron on. On the bed, that was very prettily trimmed and arranged with painted flowers and real flowers all about it, was Beatrice. She had yellow hair trained all over the pillow, tied up with blue bows, and a great many of them. Her eyes were very wide open and sad. She was a very tall woman, for she stretched a good way under the bedclothes. She put out a wretchedly thin sort of claw to take hold of me—she had seen Auntie May before, just for a minute.
'Oh, you sweet, right, absolutely perfect thing,' she said to me. 'May, how did you know that it was exactly what I wanted?'
All this was so fearfully and wonderfully polite that I made a great effort and conquered my own repugnance to an ill person, and flinging mother's mean counsels to the winds, I let her take me in her arms and fold me up quite close to her, almost inside the sheets, and squeeze me till I thought she would drive all the breath out of my body. At any rate, the poor sick thing was happy, and it is a delightful feeling to be giving any one pleasure like that. I didn't even squeal. She was far too weak to do it again, luckily, but lay quite still with her arms slack, letting me lie on her chest, curled up so that it would take me some time to go away. I think They ought to know that if once you get a cat to curl wherever it is you want him to settle, he has accepted the situation, and there is no fear of his running away for the present.
'Will you leave it with me, May, dear? Will it stop alone with me without you, do you think?'
'Oh, it is very young, it hasn't learnt to love me yet!' Auntie May said hastily. 'It will stay with you all right—that is, if nurse permits it.'
She raised her eyebrows at the nurse and the nurse nodded.
'I can't say I approve of cats in the sick-room, Miss,' she said in a low voice while Beatrice was fondling me, 'but for this once—and it seems to have done her so much good, too!'
Auntie May said, 'You see, we are all like that in our family—perfectly mad on cats. It is only because my sister lives in the country, where cats are so apt to go a-hunting and get killed, that she doesn't have the house full of them. You see, I know how she feels, as I am her twin-sister. Now I will go and tell my brother-in-law of the success of his prescription.'
Before she left the room she bent down and whispered to me:
'Be a good boy, and stay behind willingly, and don't come squealing after me the moment the door shuts behind me, or I'll never forgive you, Loki, so just you mind!'