The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [9]
Christopher wondered if Mrs. Tommy were the cook, and was on the point of asking for further particulars, when Miss Mullen continued:
“She’s the great-great-grandmother of all me cats, and I want you to immortalise her; but don’t come till after Monday, as I’d like to introduce you to my cousin, Miss Fitzpatrick; did you hear she was coming?”
“Yes, Mr. Lambert told us she was to be here next week,” said Christopher, with an indescribable expression that was not quite amusement, but was something more than intelligence.
“What did he say of her?”
Christopher hesitated; somehow what he remembered of Mr. Lambert’s conversation was of too free and easy a nature for repetition to Miss Fitzpatrick’s cousin.
“He—er—seemed to think her very—er—charming in all ways,” he said rather lamely.
“So it’s talking of charming young ladies you and Roddy Lambert are when he comes to see you on estate business!” said Charlotte archly, but with a rasp in her voice. “When my poor father was your father’s agent, and I used to be helping him in the office, it was charming young cattle we talked about, and not young ladies.”
Christopher laughed in a helpless way.
“I wish you were at the office still, Miss Mullen; if anyone could understand the Land Act I believe it would be you.”
At this moment there was an upheaval among the matrons; the long line rose and broke, and made for the grey stone house whose windows were flashing back the sunlight through the trees at the end of the lawn-tennis grounds. The tedious skirmish with midges, and the strain of inactivity were alike over for the present, and the conscience of the son of the house reminded him that he ought to take Miss Mullen in to tea.
* * *
CHAPTER IV.
There was consternation among the cats at Tally Ho Lodge; a consternation mingled with righteous resentment. Even the patriarchal Susan could scarcely remember the time that the spare bedroom had been anything else than an hospital, a nursery, and a secure parliament house for him and his descendants; yet now, in his old age, and when he had, after vast consideration of alternatives, allocated to himself the lowest shelf of the wardrobe as a sleeping place, he was evicted at a moment’s notice, and the folded-away bed curtains that had formed his couch were even now perfuming the ambient air as they hung out of the window over the hall door. Susan was too dignified to give utterance to his wounded feelings; he went away by himself, and, sitting on the roof of the fowl-house, thought unutterable things. But his great-niece, Mrs. Bruff, could not emulate his stoicism. Followed by her five latest kittens, she strode through the house, uttering harsh cries of rage and despair, and did not cease from her lamentations until Charlotte brought the whole party into the drawing-room, and established them in the waste-paper basket.
The worst part about the upheaval, as even the youngest and least experienced of the cats could see, was that it was irrevocable. It was early morning when the first dull blow of Norry’s broom against the wainscot had startled them with new and strange apprehension, and incredulity had grown to certainty, till the final moment when the sight of a brimming pail of water urged them to panic-struck flight. It may be admitted that Norry the Boat, who had not, as a rule, any special taste for cleanliness, had seldom enjoyed anything more than this day of turmoil, this routing of her ancient enemies. Miss Charlotte, to whom on ordinary occasions the offended cat never appealed in vain, was now bound by her own word. She had given orders that the spare room was to be “cleaned down,” and cleaned down it surely should be. It was not, strictly speaking, Norry’s work. Louisa was house and parlour-maid; Louisa, a small and sullen Protestant orphan of unequalled sluggishness and stupidity, for whose capacity for dealing with any emergency Norry had a scorn too deep for any words that might conveniently be repeated here. It was not likely