at down, as I have said, and
right beside him on another chair Doc was lying. The animal was
pretending to be asleep but I knew very well he was not, for he has
been Hyde all day and Hyde never sleeps. By the way, Mrs. Dr. dear,
have you noticed that that cat is far oftener Hyde than Jekyll now? The
more victories Germany wins the Hyder he becomes. I leave you to draw
your own conclusions from that. I suppose Whiskers thought he might
curry favour with me by praising the creature, little dreaming what my
real sentiments towards it were, so he stuck out his pudgy hand and
stroked Mr. Hyde's back. 'What a nice cat,' he said. The nice cat flew
at him and bit him. Then it gave a fearful yowl, and bounded out of the
door. Whiskers looked after it quite amazed. 'That is a queer kind of a
varmint,' he said. I agreed with him on that point, but I was not going
to let him see it. Besides, what business had he to call our cat a
varmint? 'It may be a varmint or it may not,' I said, 'but it knows the
difference between a Canadian and a Hun.' You would have thought, would
you not, Mrs. Dr. dear, that a hint like that would have been enough
for him! But it went no deeper than his skin. I saw him settling back
quite comfortable, as if for a good talk, and thought I, 'If there is
anything coming it may as well come soon and be done with, for with all
these rags to dye before supper I have no time to waste in flirting,'
so I spoke right out. 'If you have anything particular to discuss with
me, Mr. Pryor, I would feel obliged if you would mention it without
loss of time, because I am very busy this afternoon.' He fairly beamed
at me out of that circle of red whisker, and said, 'You are a
business-like woman and I agree with you. There is no use in wasting
time beating around the bush. I came up here today to ask you to marry
me.' So there it was, Mrs. Dr. dear. I had a proposal at last, after
waiting sixty-four years for one.

"I just glared at that presumptuous creature and I said, 'I would not
marry you if you were the last man on earth, Josiah Pryor. So there you
have my answer and you can take it away forthwith.' You never saw a man
so taken aback as he was, Mrs. Dr. dear. He was so flabbergasted that
he just blurted out the truth. 'Why, I thought you'd be only too glad
to get a chance to be married,' he said. That was when I lost my head,
Mrs. Dr. dear. Do you think I had a good excuse, when a Hun and a
pacifist made such an insulti