Minny, the cat, was hanging by
his claws on to her shoulder.

"Are you fond of cats, sir?"

"I adore them." (He did.)

"Would you like to have Minny, sir? He'll be nice company for you."

"Ought I to deprive you of his society?"

"I don't mind, sir. I've got the little dogs." She looked at him softly.
"And you've got nothing."

"True, Rose. I've got nothing."

That evening, as he sat in his chair, with Rose's cat curled up on his
knee, he found himself thinking, preposterously thinking, about Rose.

He supposed she was Mrs. Eldred's daughter. He did not like to think of
her as Mrs. Eldred's daughter. She was charming now; but he had a vision
of her as she might be in twenty years' time, grown shapeless and
immense, and wheezing as Mrs. Eldred wheezed. Yet no; that was too
horrible. You could not think of Rose as--wheezing. People did not
always take after their mothers. Rose must have had a father. Of course,
Eldred was her father; and Eldred was a small man, lean and brown as a
beetle; and he had never heard him wheeze.

At dinner-time Rose solved his doubt.

"Aunt says, sir, do you mind my waitin' on you?"

"I do not mind it in the very least."

"It's beginning to be a trouble to Aunt now to get up-stairs."

"I wouldn't dream of troubling your aunt."

Her aunt? Mrs. Eldred was not her mother. Ah, but you could take after
your aunt.

He found that this question absorbed him more than was becoming. He
determined to settle it.

"Are you going to stay here, then?" he asked, with guile.

"Yes, sir. I've come back to live with Uncle."

"Have you always lived here?"

"Yes, sir. Father left me to Uncle when he died."

"Then, Rose, Mrs. Eldred is not your aunt?"

"Oh no, sir," said Rose eagerly.

Tanqueray felt a relief out of all proportion to its cause.

He continued the innocent conversation.

"And so you're going to look after me, are you?"

"Yes," said Rose. He noticed that when she dropped the "sir," it was
because her voice drew itself back with a little gasping breath.

"And your aunt, you think, really won't be equal to it?"

"Well, sir, you see, she gets all of a flutter like, and then she
w'eezes, and she knows that's irritating for you to hear." She paused.
"And Aunt was afraid that if you was irritated, sir, you'd go. Nothin'
could keep you."

(How thoroughly they understood him!)

"Well, I'm not irritated any more. But it is unfortunate, isn't it, that
she--er--wheezes?"