Up to now I had been kept as much as possible with Beatrice; but when she was better and able to come down, I realised that there were three children in the house—my old friend Rosamond, of course, and two others, Amerye and Kitty, whom I had hardly seen at all.
Heaps of people kept cropping up. There was Miss Grueber, their governess, and Annie, their schoolroom-maid. After Beatrice had been downstairs and 'on the sofa' a week, her mother-in-law, Tom's mother, a Mrs. Gilmour, came, and I scratched her.
She made the most fearful fuss, and I am ready to declare that my claw was not shot out with any degree of violence, nor did it penetrate more than the eighth of an inch into her hand. But she said her arm would mortify. She complained of a twisting sort of pain reaching up as far as her elbow, and wore her arm in a sling to keep the blood out of it. She said there was poison in cat's nails as well as in that of human beings, only their nails don't affect you unless that human being is in a rage. She went about with a 'poor-poor' face, and requested that I might be removed if I happened to be in the room when she came into it. I often hid when she was there, for though I disliked her and would not ever go near her again, or play with her bobbly fringe or the ends of her fur stole, I found her amusing and liked to listen to the absurd things she said and the stories she told, although I hardly believed them. She said she herself was indifferent to cats if they didn't come near her, but there were people who fainted away if a cat came into the room where they were. That I afterwards had reason to know was true, for it coloured my whole life.
One day Beatrice was downstairs lying on the sofa in a sweet lace thing with lots of fascinating frills to play with. I refrained because she had been ill. She told us she had put on this lovely négligée because Mr. Fox was coming to tea.
'Who is Mr. Fox?' asked Auntie May.
'Oh, a very nice man who has taken Shortleas this year. I don't know where he comes from—London, I suppose—but I met him somewhere before I was ill and found we were neighbours—if you call five miles apart neighbours—and thought we might as well be civil to him. I asked him to tea while you were here—I thought perhaps he might like to meet a London authoress.'
Auntie May looked cross, as she always does when they talk of her books, which she doesn't think much of, only they bring her pocket money, and as Mr. Graham is always spending his on old silver and enamel, it is important to her. Then as it was still quite early, and Mr. Fox wasn't likely to come till tea-time, Beatrice civilly asked Mrs. Gilmour to play something to us.
Mrs. Gilmour said she wouldn't, at first, but Beatrice worried her to do it, knowing that she meant to in the end, and at last the old lady opened the instrument, as she called it, and began.
In all my life I never heard anything like it! The old thing's gnarled fingers hopped and skipped and jumped and rattled about like hailstones, and the notes bobbed up under them as if they were alive. I longed to catch them, but I dared not go any nearer to the terrible noise.
'Lovely!' murmured Beatrice, closing her eyes.