'Don't talk nonsense, child. I am not going to marry Mr. Fox at all, whether Pet were to die to-morrow or live to be a hundred, as I am sure I hope she will, poor lamb! As for Mr. Fox, our tastes are too absolutely dissimilar for anything of that kind to be possible.'
'Quite possible, I think, if only the cat difficulty could be got over,' said that naughty Rosamond. 'I believe you two adore each other! And aren't you grateful to him for bringing your horrid cat—horrid from his point of view I mean—across to Paris for you? I think it was angelic, like a knight of old, performing terribly difficult tasks to please his lady.'
'Will you hold your silly little tongue? Go and do your health exercises!'
That was the way she always got rid of Rosamond, by some order or another. You see Rosamond, though she was sixteen, still had to obey. Yet though Auntie May was older than Rosamond, that child could turn her round her little finger.
Luckily mother was not in the room when Rosamond said those nasty things about her age. But I thought over them deeply. It was true mother had grown very thin and weak lately; several times I have heard Mary say when lifting her up:
'Why, she don't weigh no more than a feather!'
Her eyes were so big and bright they seemed to swallow up her whole face. I wondered how long Mr. Fox thought he would have to wait? I wondered how long we cats usually live, but, of course, I did not like to ask mother for fear of making her think about death. I remember her once telling me that when her time came to die she would not like anybody to be there. She would try to get away into a corner somewhere, and not be found till all was over.
That is cat's way all over the world, and I believe the way of dogs too.
I wonder if that was the way that Admiral Togo died?
One morning Auntie May got a letter from Mrs. Dillon. She read it aloud to Rosamond as long as she could without crying, and then Rosamond took it by her permission and read it too aloud till she cried. But this way I got it all.