'May, I have no patience with you. You must give up something.'
'Why can't he give up something, instead of me?'
'You may be quite sure he does give up something—heaps of things—to please you. He is willing to give up smoking—'
'Yes, it makes me sick. But why should any one mind cats? It is absurd that such a silly prejudice as that can't be got over.'
'Well really, if cats make him, and smoking makes you sick, I consider it a very fair exchange. I say, look at Loki, now, I should take that kitten away from him if I were you, he is licking it to a pulp.'
Auntie May got up and took the kitten away from me. I had worked very hard at it, and had made it quite wet. I thought I had done well. I know I took pains. I had got my paws round its neck to steady it, and it said nothing. I must say it looked rather shrunken and flattened out thin when they took it away, but I believe Beatrice only mentioned it, and objected to what I was doing to it, to change the conversation. She probably thought she had been going on at May too long.
All this time I had never seen the blessed Mr. Fox who was upsetting us all so. I was kept carefully out of his way. Consequently I didn't see much of my mistress.
But one day I was in the studio under a console, behind the dummy, behind Rosamond's portrait, in fact a good way off, and with a good many artistic smells between me and Mr. Fox, who had come to see Auntie May, and had been shown in there as the drawing-room was untidy and having something done to it, and Mr. Graham was out varnishing at the Royal Academy. Auntie May knew she had shut the door of her study, and considered that I therefore could not possibly be anywhere but safe upstairs. I wasn't in when she shut it, however, you see. I did not show myself to them, tactfully, but tried to get out, following the skirting board all the way to the door. There were heaps of things propped up against the walls, and it was slow work. Besides, Mr. Fox for once did not seem at all affected by my presence.
I had only got half round the room when I heard Auntie May say:
'Mr. Fox—' she hesitated a little, 'it might interest you perhaps to know that I have decided to let Beatrice take Loki, while Pet stays behind with Dad!'