a doctor! You can't think how they get on your
nerves when they're, like that. I've bumped up against so many of them.
They fired me at last!"

"Really? Where? I thought they only did that to the dear horses. Oh,
what a pretty laugh you have! It's so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in
these days."

"I thought no one did anything else! I mean, what else can you do,
except die, don't you know?"

"I think that's rather a gloomy view," said the old lady placidly. "But
about your neighbour. What is his name?"

"Lavender. But I call him Don Pickwixote."

"Dear me, do you indeed? Have you noticed anything very eccentric about
him?"

"That depends on what you call eccentric. Wearing a nightshirt, for
instance? I don't know what your standard is, you see."

The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden
was heard saying:

"Blink! Don't touch that charming mooncat!"

"Hush!" murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor's arm, she drew
her vigorously beneath the acacia tree. Sheltered from observation by
those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes
to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn
in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a
dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in
the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.

"If you see me going to laugh," whispered the young lady, "pinch me
hard."

"Moon-cat," repeated Mr. Lavender, "where have you come from? And what
do you want, holding up your paw like that? What curious little noises
you make, duckie!" The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a
duck. It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself
against Blink's chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver,
brushed her mouth.

"This is extraordinary," they heard Mr. Lavender say; "I would stroke it
if I wasn't so stiff. How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to
my play-girl! For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as
friendliness between a dog and cat!"

At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so
affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.

"Not yet!" whispered the latter in some agony. "Listen!"

"Moon-cat," Mr. Lavender was saying, "Arcadia is in your golden eyes.
You have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from
it." And too stiff to reach the cat by bending,