'Poor Pettigrew!' said Auntie May in a thin little voice.
'Poor Pettigrew indeed! She is simply starving you, that is what she is doing, and taking ten francs a day for it! I am not going to leave you here a day longer, if I take you away in an ambulance!'
There was no need for Auntie May to go in an ambulance. She paid Manxie, who was in a towering rage, a month's pay in lieu of notice, Mrs. Jay packed up her belongings, my old basket was brought out again, and we were settled in the Rue de L'Echelle by the evening. I never saw Mistigris again.
CHAPTER XIV
'POOSH!'
They had the slipperiest floors in the Rue de L'Echelle, made of pieces of wood joined together and then polished till the nap was like silk. Léocadie, the bonne, did it with cloths wrapped about her feet, and she looked too funny and chaseable skating up and down the floors. Sometimes Philippe, Mr. Jay's servant, did it, and he plodged, that was the difference. Léocadie ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed her, but he chaffed her. She was rather a little slop in her morning blouse and her checked apron and her black frizzly hair, and when she gave him an order he would answer gravely, 'Bien, Princesse!' which sent Mr. Jay into fits of laughter. Léocadie was very kind to me. She was always holding out some little odd-and-end for me to eat, saying, 'Tiens, Minet?' while I liked lying on Philippe's coat, that he took off when he worked, better than anything.
Then in the warm May days that were coming on, I used to lie in the balcony and look through the iron lace-work and put my paw out, and shake it about in the air. I could look down, too, and see the wheelbarrows with bright flowers on them, and the bare-headed women with lovely hair, and the tinkling cabs, and the drivers with their grey beaver hats.
Auntie May got a great deal better, well enough to go into society—French society. Mrs. Jay sometimes went with her, but not always, and one night—a night that will long live in my memory—Auntie May went to Madame Taine's literary party all alone.
At nine o'clock she came out of her room in her new evening cloak, and in a lovely pink dress all sequins and beads, and went down the stairs of the flat. I slipped out too, and went down on the train of her dress most of the way. She ought to have held it up, of course. She got into the cab the concierge had fetched, and having said goodbye to me upstairs, thought no more about me, and I was left sitting alone on the kerb.