thought highly of the thing up to that moment. But some way it seemed to
him I was talking scandal about his pet--kind of clouding up its
ancestry, if you know what I mean. He didn't seem to get any broad view
of it at all. You'd almost think I'd been reporting an indiscretion in
some member of his family. Can you beat it? Heating up that way over a
puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he'd been thinking of as a
pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle! So he starts in from that
minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies;
and every time I see him after that he'd look indignant and say what
great hands for spreading gossip us women are, and his kitten ain't got
no more bobcat in its veins than what I have.

"He's a stubborn old toad. Irene had told him the kitten's name was
Kate; so he kept right on calling it that even after it become
incongruous, as you might say. Judge Ballard was up here on a fishing
trip one time and heard him calling it Kate, and he says to Egbert: Why
call it Kate when it ain't? Egbert says that was the name little Irene
give it and it's too much trouble to think up another. The Judge says,
Oh, no; not so much trouble, being that he could just change the name
swiftly from Kate to Cato, thus meeting all conventional requirements
with but slight added labour. But Egbert says there's the sentiment to
think of--whatever he meant by that; and if you was to go over there
to-day and he was home you'd likely hear him say: 'Yes; Kate is
certainly some cat! Why, he's at least half bobcat--mebbe
three-quarters; and the fightingest devil!' What's that? Yes; he's
changed completely round about the wildcat strain. He's proud of it. If
I was to say now it was only a quarter bob he'd be as mad as he was at
first; he says anybody can see it's at least half bob. What changed him?
Oh, well, we're too near home. Some other time."

So it befell that not until we sat out for a splendid sunset that
evening did I learn in an orderly manner of Postlethwaite vicissitudes.
Ma Pettengill built her first cigarette with tender solicitude; and
this, in consideration of her day's hard ride, I permitted her to burn
in relaxed silence. But when her trained fingers began to combine paper
and tobacco for the second I mentioned Broadmoor, Postlethwaite,
Posnett, and parties in general that come round the tired business
woman, harassed with the countless vexations of a large cattle ranch,
telli